I’ve planted my feet in red river cart ruts. They still streak the prairie you know. Like the scar that forms from picking a wound too many times. If you look, really look, you can find them.
Read Shannon Lepine's Ruts in the PrairieMy name is Shannon Lepine, and I am a member of the Métis Nation of Alberta, though my family roots are found in northern Saskatchewan and Manitoba. I learned about my family heritage and the history of the Métis people when I was a child through family history books and a special road trip that we took to Batoche, Saskatchewan when I was a child.
It is the memory of that trip to Batoche this inspires this poem. Though that trip took place a long time ago, I remember having the remains of overgrown but distinct red river cat ruts pointed out to me on the prairie. To this day, that image and that experience has stayed with me.
As an adult I have struggled to reconnect with the Métis heritage that I feel I have lost somewhere along the way. Because my skin is white, the world does not see me as an aboriginal person, but it is the pounding heart found beneath my skin that constantly reminds me of my heritage, and it is the roots of my ancestors planted deep in the past that constantly urge me to uncover them.
This poem is about my search for a lost heritage, the things I have learned in my search and the struggles I have faced.
I’ve planted my feet
in red river cart ruts.
They still streak the prairie you know.
Like the scar that forms from picking a wound
too many times.
If you look,
really look,
you can find them.
They’re still there,
though the prairie has begun to heal around them.
I can stand here in these ruts,
my feet buried in prairie grasses,
I close my eyes and hear the sound of wooden carts
driven across the land by day,
the sound of cracking fire and jigging fiddle
laughing and playing by night.
Though I cannot see it reflected in the grim eyes
that peer out at me from a history book.
If you look,
really look,
you can see just the hint of a smile in my great kokum’s face.
A spark that she passed on to me.
I’ve stood on different grasses,
far away from those ruts in the prairie.
My eyes wet.
Missing a woman
that I never had the chance to know.
A sash pinned across my chest
by someone else’s kokum.
Its colours are symbols that I don’t understand,
but I want so much to know them.
If I look,
really look,
I will learn them.
Because the scars are still there.
Streaked across my heritage,
though not across my skin.
They are planted in red river cart ruts on the prairie.