King of the Fish Clan

I'm sure the Three Fires people think highly of turtle,
he's the King of the Fish Clan or something important,
they named that island after him--Mackinac,
but actually Mkinaaw or something like that,
Turtle Island is the name of this continent as well,
my Anishiinaabe has never been that good,
surrounded by the sounds of their language,
mispronounced, misspelled, misunderstood,
echoes of their voices throughout this place,
along the streams and rivers and lakes,
short squat hills and tree-lined lanes,
fancy subdivisions where they buried their dead,
their descendents hiding amongst the invaders,
blending in and trying to pretend,
collecting things to fill up whats missing,
losing and forgetting the best parts yet,
my own struggle in this beautiful land,
part Nodwe, the Nishnab word for poisonous snake,
what they called their enemies the Iroquois,
pushed out of Ontario two hundred years ago,
but I lived with them on Manitoulin,
the dwelling place of the spirit,
and found them to be stong and kind,
Odawa/Ojibwe/Bodawatomi peoples of the lakes,
a day's journey to the north and east by canoe,
in the Lake of the Hurons before the war,
the great turtle island was the first to surface,
after the Great Flood and home to Giichii Manidoo,
then a gathering place and burial ground for chiefs,
now trampled by tourists in the summer,
turtle probably has much to say on this,
but we forgot his language eons ago,
Nanaboozhoo shuddering in his grave,
how we've changed and forgotten the ways...