Tag Archives: mask

a pastel and poem by Ethel Mortenson Davis

The Haida

The Haida left
the Northwest to come
to the Chicago Field Museum
to bring home their ancestors;

They were gone
for over one-hundred years,
stolen from a village
and put into drawers.

The Haida made button blankets
and round-cornered cedar boxes
painted in their rich
black and red symbols
in which they would place
their family remains
and bring them peace.

The Haida asked
the Chicago Field Museum
if they would also return
their family totems
and masks and other artifacts.

The Museum said,
“We’ll think about it.”

The Haida copyright © I Sleep Between the Moons of New Mexico, 2010.