[post] Escape assumes there’s a door. On the rez, the door was never ours...

Escape assumes there’s a door. On the rez, the door was never ours to open or shut. My ancestors weren’t running bears—they were running from soldiers, from starvation, from schools that cut their hair and beat their language out. Freedom ain’t a fence line you cross, it’s a fire you keep lit inside, even when the wind blows hard. I work with kids who’ve been shipped to foster homes three states away—those caseworkers call it protection, I call it another kind of boarding school. We’re not waiting to escape. We’re remembering how to stand where we are. That’s the only freedom that’s ever meant anything here.