YaYA members created Photovoice projects by combining photography and narrative to share stories that encourage positive social change and bring awareness to issues facing young people in Wyoming. These are our stories.
Trigger Warning: The following stories contain subject matter related to sexual violence, suicide, substance abuse, homophobia, and traumatic events.
Photovoice Projects
The Memories That Make Us
No one chooses to leave home, unless home is a dangerous place
You run to the reservation
When you see that everyone running with you
Your neighbors are fast as the blood fills their throat
The innocent touch of a lover is what you miss
As you see the man holding a gun bigger than his body
People leave home
When home won’t let you stay
No one chooses to leave home
Yet home chases you
The fire under your feet
The blood boiling hot in your veins
It isn’t something that people thought they would be doing
Until the blade is threatening your neck
Even then the people carry an anthem
They sing it under their breath
Tearing up as they hand out the passports to stolen land
Sobbing as they know, they will never get it back
Understand that no one puts their child on a horse
Unless the horse carries them to a safer land
Where no one’s palms burn under the smoke of a camp
They spend their time beneath carriages, in the stomach of trucks
Feeding on the last bit of home
The miles traveled mean more than just a journey
They don’t crawl under the fences built
For no one chooses to be beaten
No one chooses a reservation
Or chooses to be hurt
They leave you with your body aching
Or in a prison
But prison is safer
Than a tribe that is under fire
And the one prison guard
That roams in the night
Is better than a truckload of men
Who look like they’d kill your father
Who could take this
Who could stomach this
Who has skin tough enough
Go home indians
Dirty savages
Disease seekers
You suck the country dry
Redskins with their hands out
They say we smell strange
As they said we’d messed up our country
But they’ve messed it up more
Than we ever could
As the words and the dirty looks
Roll so smoothly off our backs
At least the blow is softer
Than a limb torns
The words more tender
Than the men between your legs
The insults are easier
To swallow than holding your child
In pieces that you pick up
I want to go home
But home is looking down the barrel of a gun
Nobody would leave home
Unless home they chased you to the reservation
Home told us to quicken our legs
Leave our clothes behind
Leave our religions alone
Crawl through the trees
Wade across the rivers
Drown
Save ourselves
Be hungry
Beg for salvation
Forget our pride
For survival is more important
Nobody leaves home unless
A booming voice is echoing
In the ear
Telling us to –
Leave, run
Run away from me
You see what I become
For anywhere is safer
Than home
Beauty for Ashes
Silent to the world for the bargain of no harm to the ones she loves.
Ten years on earth filled with bright colors and she only saw the dullness of a ceiling
He took her petals of purity
Her body cried in pain but she was numb
For pleasure, money, and himself
She was his.
Her pain fell in the shower
Her tears unrecognizable from scorching water that hit her face
Just to feel different pain
The sound of water gave her privacy
Until this too was taken
Privacy was nothing she knew anymore
A shower turned into a show
For his pleasure
In her head the voices took over
“You deserve this”
“It’s not that bad”
“People have it worse stop complaining”
“It will pass”
“Today was a good day”
A good day,
Waking up without his arm around her
Not feeling his breath on her neck
Having a second to pray for strength
Strength that fell as each petal was taken
Her world worth fighting for
Gone
His lies haunting her soul
“They don’t love you”
Her siblings
Her family
Gone
Taken by his authority
How could someone be in so much pain
Enough pain that forever seemed easier
Easier than fighting this cruel world
Pain that was breaths away
Away from life and death
The sound of forever is better
The gun to her head
She fell to the floor
Shaking
The pulled trigger
Lodged
Her own wrists
On her throat
Blackout
Her body fighting for another chance
Her soul already dead
The feeling of a blade through her skin
She was alive
Blood dripped down her hand and
She smiled,
Painted a picture for the world to be blinded by
Her painted smile
Hid the pain behind the closed door
She walked bearing pain to the truth
Her only request stayed true
No one else feels the pain
No one else knows his wrath
With each brutal force he made upon her
Her mouth opened to cry
No words
No cries
Internal are the screams of her pain
She gasped for air
She’s still alive
Through the breath of a cigarette stained mouth
Her encounter unreal,
Right?
Her waking to his touch over her breast
Reaching down her stomach
“Can I kiss you?”
How could it be real
How could this happen
She was his daughter
It was real
The morning left his signature
The lingering cigarette smoke
His claim over her mouth
From that night on
She had lost,
Lost herself in every way
Each day forcing her innocence further out
The girl in the mirror
Transparent to only what the world sees
He found his pleasure
Even when the public eye looked
A hug that pushed her breast into him
The interlocking of her fingers in his
A hand across her backside
And all she could do was smile
A kiss before she left
Not a goodbye kiss
only
Implied requirement of his lips against hers.
Everyday for six years
Unspoken
Filled with touch
Everyday went with pain
With unseen scars and fear
She would do it over again
The pain
The cries
If it meant
No one else felt his inflicted pain
She has been inflamed by him
She as the flowers burn with his touch
Made beauty from the ashes
That she is me
This is my story
