An Indian Dreams of the River

Publication Instance Details #1055

Publication Overview

Translation	Is Multilingual	Explicit Irish Context?	Ekphrasis	Has Paratext?	Reference to News, Media or Technology
No	Yes	No	No	Yes	No

Details

Human Rights Issues	HR & Colonisation/Colonial Legacies Genocide Indigenous Rights (incl. culture & language) HR & Environment Gender-based violence
Languages	English
Genre	Short Lyric
Medium	Print Anthology
Paratext Text	I wrote this poem in Dr Steeven's Hospital, Dublin, in 1983 - or more accurately, it came to me like a message from another realm. I can't remember how I was aware of the murders of the Guatemalan Indians, but they were on my mind. It was light at night, and I was in pain and probably drugged to the gills, when I had a vision of fireflies coupled with a powerful sense of identification with the victims of the Guatemalan horror. Some years later, I had the moving experience of seeing the poem dramatized by Terry McDonagh and his cosmopolitan students at the Internationale Schule in Hamburg.
Notes	This poem reflects on the brutality of the Spanish conquest of Guatemala. Many of the indigenous people oppressed and slaughtered by the conquistadores were of Mayan descent. The indigenous people were routed by the Spanish colonists and had little resistance to the diseases of Europe. This speaker of this poem is an indigenous woman whose life has been altered by the conquistadores. Her husband has been murdered, she herself was raped, and her river was poisoned by the leather of the conquistadores' jackboots.