No, nooo, The Forgotten will Never Be Forgotten by Us
So it is with the revelations of art. Art brings us home by taking us abroad. William Deresiewicz
(Excellent Sheep)
They cynically have completely written all of you out of their and also out of our history books
They have systematically tried to silence you in our memories with different ceremonies
Together with quite often their local elite helpers and loyal native plunders
But, no, nooo, you will not be forgotten by us
I promise you that
No, nooo, the forgotten and the violently written-off will never be forgotten by us
You, who from early on, bravely and tirelessly stood up to them everywhere
You, who from very early on, chose to throw yourself overboard and rather to be eaten alive by the hungry big sharks following their vile ships, instead of continuing to live under their brutally plundering exploitative uncivilized control
I promise you that
We, who are struggling for major changes here, will certainly not forget about you
Those of you who they wanted to become vergeten* in the hellish process of domination
Those of you who they arrogantly and contemptuously wrote off as los olvidados**
Those of you tha they wan we heere tay simplay overlook and tay totallay forget about
No, nooo, the forgotten will never be forgotten by us, as we continue to resist and rebel
I promise all of you the nameless and the unknown ones all over
You, who was violently brought to these scattered Islands in the Sea, and forged a new culture over time, and new ways of understanding, and of doing things out of nothing
You, who proudly created, new native languages out of your complex Atlantic pasts
I promise you that
You who they have constantly encouraged us to oblie#, as being irrelevant to our future
We, we, we will certainly not forget about you because we urgently need you
Although, standing here today and looking all around me, I cannot promise you that we will do everything the way you did things for these are other times with new demands
But, no, nooo, the despised and the often abused will not, will never, be forgotten by us
We will have to build on those structures, sometimes even hidden, which you have left behind, in our own respective ways moving forward, in order to be able to truly succeed
We will pay our respects to you in our new songs, new dances, in our films and in our various monuments, which we still have to start building in all of these restless Islands
No, nooo, the forgotten will never be forgotten by Us, and by we, we who are constantly tirelessly building different new independent, socially just, fundamentally equally inclusive and highly participatory democratic nations all around here in the tropics
They, the powerful worldwide, who want us to follow exactly in their path, as if their ways of doing things, is the one true and eternal universal way of doing so everywhere
But, you are in the air we breathe, the ground we walk upon, the food we eat, the water we drink, the very local language that we speak with one another each and every day
And in which we equally boldly continue to dream about new and better tomorrows here
No, nooo, we will always remember you, in all of our resistant and independent actions because simply put we are you, and you are us, in many new and imaginative ways.
©Gregory Gilbert Gumbs
*Vergeten is to forget in Dutch.
**Los olvidados is the forgotten in Spanish, which is often used for those who were disappeared, in Latin America, in the 1960s and in the 1970s, fighting against the murderous U.S. backed dictatorships in power there.
#oblie is to forget in French.
