No Police in Site
Dear Readers,
I was asked a while ago to write a piece relating to policing in the school systems in Canada. At first, I wondered, how can this be addressed from a place of hope and healing. As such, I was inspired to craft the poem below tilted, “No Police In Site.” I hope that you will find it as inspiring as I have.
The question about an alternate solution to the police presence in the community made me take a sip of humility.
My sip of humility was the train to my wonder of the happenings of my forebears.
I began to wonder about how my forefathers did it?
How did they do it so that we had a community where no one paid taxes, yet everyone had everything that they needed.
How did they do it?
How did they do it where they had a society without crime, hence no need for the police, jails, and the bureaucratic court systems.
How did my forebears do this?
My mothers, they blossomed in hope, knowing that they will experience their children’s children.
My fathers planned for the posterities for their bloodlines, knowing for certain the formula that life presents.
How did we depart from a society so safe, so secure, where we needed no one to watch our goods in the market?
For customers, with you, the seller, not in sight, will pick up their wants and leave the money on your sheet or your stalk; and they feared not that another will deprive you, the seller, of your monies.
The child in the Lands of my forebears knows such joy and prosperity, builds good character according to our Ancestral values, yet, without the concept of a police in site.
In our indigenous Lands, where there exists the best of characters, this still is the case – NO POLICE IN SITE.
But I know that the problem is more than the site of the police; it did not start with the police, nor will it end with it.
Knowing this, perhaps, we all should accept my invitation to take a sip of humility that I present ever so generously.
May this sip do your heart good to inquire of my forebears: “Baba and Mama! How did you so graciously build many policeless crimeless communities with posterities?”
