Seeing Red

Lyrics for Seeing Red

A woman said to me "Your words are nice and all, but they seem really angry" Wherein I stated that truth is sometimes hard to hear That anger is a perception more than a thing that inherently is And those words are positive when you consider I get to say them openly without having my hair cut against my will Or punched in the face or my scalp forcibly removed from my head These words don't sound angry These words aren't just words They're proclamations of hope An inflection of righteousness Because there is such a thing as righteous anger You ask if I'm angry because I use words like injustice and inequality They ask me if I'm angry because I say words like genocide Racial superiority and colonialism But are these words of anger? Aren't these words from your colonial language? That time I met someone and within 28 seconds of meeting him Not looking me in the eye An ocular dismissiveness Speaking to me as though speaking to the wind "Are you an Indian?" He said Yes So I guess you get a check from the government then? To which I corrected him, saying that If we did get a check from the government It'd be soiled with the blood of my people Who paved your roads with their bones for your so-called civilization And he snapped back aggressively telling me that I'm a militant A militant? A militant? The assumption that I'm angry because they know we should be mad They know our resistance is a protest to their policies The policies that would take everything from us Not just our lives but our resources Our culture, language, tradition, stories, legacy, then death But militant? Militant denotes invasion Who invaded who? Who brought violence and death? Am I angry? Am I angry? Am I angry? Am I angry? My only sin here is being indigenous in the 21st century My emotion is a house you built My anger's a lot safer than your mass shootings Your genocide, your lynchings, your secret police Your cop killers Am I angry? Am I angry? Am I angry? Am I angry? Am I angry? Am I angry? Am I angry? Am I angry? Am I angry? Am I angry? Am I angry? Am I angry? Am I angry? Am I angry? To which I say Yes, I am