They called us red.
not as people with names older than their maps—
but as a word sharpened
and thrown.

Redskin.
A color turned insult,
a story stripped of its truth.

Red
is the memory of this soil,
the earth that held our footsteps
long before fences learned the language of property.

Red
is the blood of our people
who bled during the founding of our shared nation—
our warriors beside their warriors,
our trails becoming their roads,
our hands building a country
that sometimes forgot who first held the land.

Red
is the cloth of service,
folded carefully in the arms of Native soldiers
still standing watch today—
sons and daughters of nations older than the flag
yet sworn to protect it.

Red
is the handprint painted across the face
of a sister who cannot speak
because the wind carries her name now.

A mark for the missing.
A mark for the stolen.
A mark that says
we see you even when the world refuses to look.

Red
is anger,
and survival.

Red
is the drumbeat under our ribs.
The fire in the circle.
The line of ancestors
standing just behind our shoulders.

They called us red
as if it meant less.

But red is not shame.

Red is remembrance.
Red is resistance.
Red is the color of a people
still here.
Still breathing.
Still writing ourselves
back into the story.