"Kennedy, Saskatchewan, Canada
celebrate our past, our businesses, our citizens,
and find out what we're doing
settled by Eastern Canadians, British, French,
Belgians, Germans and Americans,
with the earliest settlers
taking up their homesteads in 1883"
I visit a school of sweet descendants
In 1875, Chief Kitchi-Kah-Me-Win
Great Seaman or Ocean Man
signed Treaty Four adhesion
1882 sends Assiniboine, Cree, and Saulteau
to reserve
adjoining Pheasant Rump
and they become farmers of note
but if I read between the lines
do I see arm twisting
until they surrender
and relocate to White Bear?
Wikipedia announces Rudyard Kipling
visiting Vancouver in 1889
honeymooning through Winnipeg in 1892
and speaking coast to coast in 1907
sleeping in a private Pullman Palace Car
passing north, through Broadview
leading to the name Kipling Crossing
One hundred years or so later
Kipling's grade six and seven students
listen politely to the presentation
and hear for over one hundred years
they have been treaty people
Only one hundred or so years late
the courts admit the injustice
and reestablish Ocean Man
as a band in 1988
and as a reserve in 1992
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