In Ak’abal’s collection of poems, the section entitled “500 a\u00f1os” or “500 years” offers readers a complete storyline through a number of poems. Ak’abal introduces us to this story with the poem titled the same as the section, “500 years”. This poem gives us a context for the section, one critical of the treatment and status of Indigenous peoples. “500 years”, “pain”, and “holes” work together to paint a picture of the injustice (p 155, line 5), misery (p 157, line 1), and poverty (p 162, line 4) experienced by Indigenous people, and by Ak’abal. The poem titled “paradise” enlightens us to the cause of this mistreatment of Indigenous people, colonization. This particular poem begins with a description of a world of paradise, without sin, but soon transitions to a world of violence where the powerful enforce their will on others (page 159).<\/p>\n
These poems give us the beginning and the middle of a story of colonization and oppression. However, the final poem of the section “the lamb” leaves me thinking there is hope for this story. This final poem speaks of a lamb and a shepherdess, as the shepherdess licks the lambs wound (page 163). As Ak’abal ended this section with this poem, I am left thinking that the lamb represents the oppressed Indigenous people, and the shepherdess represents a more abstract idea of hope, or freedom, or justice. His choice of finishing this section that is filled with a depiction of the creation and perpetuation of the minority status of Indigenous people with a poem of healing and comfort reveals an intent to rewrite the end of a story of oppression and change it into one of hope.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In Ak’abal’s collection of poems, the section entitled “500 a\u00f1os” or “500 years” offers readers a complete storyline through a number of poems. Ak’abal introduces us to this story with the poem titled the same as the section, “500 years”. This poem gives us a context for the section, one critical of the treatment and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68360,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[40,35,43,23],"class_list":["post-128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-span312","tag-500-years","tag-akabal","tag-poetry","tag-week3"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/span312\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/span312\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/span312\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/span312\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/68360"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/span312\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/span312\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":130,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/span312\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128\/revisions\/130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/span312\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/span312\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/span312\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}