Never Ending Beat

Boom. Boom. Boom. I hear the drum as I dance around. I can forget all my problems when I dance.

Boom. Boom. Boom. I turn and leap. I feel like a colorful bird with the bright colors painted on my face and my feet off the ground.

Boom. Boom. Bang! I stop dancing at this noise. It sounds like lightning.

Bang! Bang! It comes again. Now everyone is nervous. Then the thing we have been dreading comes. The white men come with their shiny armor and loud sticks. They keep shooting them, to scare us most likely. It works because we are scared. Women and children run and the men try to fight. I run to my mother who is holding my crying brother.

The white men surround us and speak to us in a language I don't know. A man translates for us and he tells us that we have to leave. He tells us that we can't live on this land anymore. Women cry harder and the men try to fight again. Bang! To our horror we see the chief's son dead on the ground. This causes another outrage.

Bang! Bang! Two more braves are dead. We grow quiet because now we are afraid of the power of these white men's lightning sticks. They tell us that tomorrow we will move.

When we get back to our home my mother sobbed. My father was angry too. He was shouting about how these white men have no right to move us off of our home where our people have lived for so long. We know we must pack anyway.

In our leather packs we put in food and clothes. There are things of my ancestors my mother wants to take but my father says that there isn't enough room for all.

The next morning the white men return. Bang! Their loud sticks shouted to wake us up. Most of us were awake but they kept firing to scare us and to show us their power. They told us to get our things and then they led us away. The women cried softly as we walked away from our home, our life.

After walking for a few days, I asked my father why the drumbeat has ended. The drumbeat is our spirit as one tribe. He tells me that our beat will never end. He tells me that it is faint but it will always be here. I grow very quiet and listen. I hear the beat. It's the beat of many feet walking.

My father told me that the beat will change but never fade. The beat of our nation will never fade.