They Don't Love You Like I Love You

“Hiawatha’s Departure” (The Song of Hiawatha XXI) by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1855)

The Songs of Hiawatha (1855), a poem cycle by popular 19th-century poet and educator Longfellow tells the story of the Ojibway hero Hiawatha. In the last song of the cycle, “Hiawatha’s Departure,” the hero urges his people to accept European missionaries since they have been sent by the “Master of Life” from “the land of light and morning.” Thus, he accepts his way of life has ended and leaves his tribe to travel west. Though at the time of its publication, the poem cycle was considered sympathetic to Native Americans, contemporary readings point out how Longfellow exoticized Native Americans and whitewashed white crimes against them (In “Hiawatha’s Departure,’ Hiawatha describes the incoming missionaries as kind, sympathetic figures and the encounter of missionaries and Native Americans as pleasant). Reading the poem along with that of Diaz illustrates exactly the process of cultural colonization to which “They Don’t Love You …” alludes.

“River” by Sherwin Bitsui (2003)

This strong poem by Diaz’s contemporary Native American (Navajo) poet, Bitsui, uses a river as a metaphor for the violence of white settlers against Native Americans. Like Diaz does in many poems of Postcolonial Love Poem, Bitsui uses the river – a powerful motif in Native tradition – as a symbol of the body and life itself. However, in “River,” this body is watered by the blood of massacred ancestors and the river’s back (seemingly) broken by white violence.

“American Arithmetic” by Natalie Diaz (2018)

“American Arithmetic” deals more directly with the erasure of Native Americans. Diaz notes that Native Americans make only 0.8 percent of the US population at the time the poem was written. Though its themes are similar to “They Don’t Love You …” the poem’s tone more upfront, using numbers and stats, instead of metaphors to make its point. Where the two poems are alike is in Diaz’s focus on the multiple meanings of words. As “wait” becomes “weight” in “They Don’t Love You…,” in “American Arithmetic,” “race” is both origin and forced competition, the latter implying “someone will win.” Comparing the two poems is useful to see the range of Diaz’s poetic style.