Author: Nuzat Choudhury

If Soldier hypothetically wrote, “everything is in the language we do NOT use”, it would be more applicable to real life; specifically the news stories about the tragic events that we read. Balko’s piece on how reports regarding police brutality differed from the written police reports. Clearly, the police department does not want to hold their own officers accountable for their actions when writing their reports. If they were to be truthful, it would be up to them to carry out the investigation of their own officer. To avoid that, they use a specific language that is language is unclear and written in a completely false perspective (that leaves out key details) that will make the officer seem innocent. In the specific report written in Balko’s article, we can tell that the police report was leaving off many important details. For example, it didn’t include the age of the male “suspect” or the fact that there was a dog present in this situation. The American police system was created to protect their own above anyone else, which completely defeats the purpose of having police as our “protectors”.

My thoughts about the poem changed drastically from the start to the end. At first, I thought the entire style of the poem was based on a regular news article (since it was a historical topic). However, as the poem progressed, I noticed that there was more to the style, such as the rhythm that the poet spoke in. The lines were also spoken in such a clean and short manner. Soldier’s use of punctuation, italicization, and parentheses were chosen carefully in order to give each line depth. The phrase “everything is in the language that we use” is a clear theme throughout the entire poem. It was first brought up in the beginning when she dictates the rules of writing that she will follow. She states, “Here, the sentence will be respected.” This is to contrast with the fact that the treaty America drew up for the Dakotas was not respected. The theme is further developed when talking about the film Lincoln, “The signing of the Emancipation Proclamation was included in the film Lincoln; the hanging of the Dakota 38 was not.” Lincoln was always considered a honest and noble man, because of the language used to depict him. If the hanging of the Dakota 38 wasn’t ignored, Lincoln would have been viewed in a different light; an accurate one. She also states, “The word Minnesota comes from mni, which means water; and sota, which means turbid.” This line really stood out to me because it was showing that every word the Dakota Nation created had a specific meaning. Finally, she wrote about a trader who said that the Dakota’s should just eat grass if they were hungry. “When Myrick’s body was found, his mouth was stuffed with grass.” This ties in to the theme because this scene showed his mouth stuffed with the words he used. Overall, this was a really interesting poem to listen to and it taught me about another event erased from our history textbooks.