there are countless meetings at which mouths were fired

like guns in the old familiar campaigns

from which overstretched Native faculty limped home to be nursed by loved ones

or by Netflix or by messenger threads or by many (too many?) bottles of wine
there are policy documents that do nothing

trumpeting fashionable virtue via a PR machine with phrases sweated over (bled over)

as if those who run the show were ever going to let any of the words run off the page

to change the world anyway
there are contingent sessional part time temporary contracts

bearing names of how many Native people who knew the game was rigged but signed anyway

who gave up nights weekends summers health for work the institution wouldn’t even know

was done in its classrooms in its parking lots in its name
there are others, the ones who have already had their first days there,

but have packed up offices and had last days too –

who moved on for whispered reasons that somehow get twisted into cautionary tales

stories of what they did wrong instead of the millions of things they did right
there are administrators decisionmakers faculty donors alums

who still don’t think this is a real field deserving of real investment

who will smile today for photos like so many cheshire cats

while prepping phrases for one or three or five or seven years later like ‘i guess it’s a matter of fit’ 
there are ghosts and mysteries and entities

seeping through floorboards

roaming hallways

resting in doorways

looking for descendants

holding with love those they find

trying to warn them about how this story so often ends
so go ahead, Indigenous scholars: apply for these jobs! get them!

be amazing! teach students! write books!

do all the things we collectively want – need – you to do
but do not do them as the first, as the one and only

don’t allow them to turn this into a first encounter scene
do these jobs with guts and support

do them with righteous anger and rigour and love
but most of all do them knowing every moment every day every season

all of those who have come before and around you