First Nations Poetry Magazine

First Nations Poetry Magazine –

"Older Than Paper and Ink" by Cheryl L. Daytec-Yañgot

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September 15th, 2026

First Nations Poetry Contest #2 – First Place

Older Than Paper and Ink

by Cheryl L. Daytec-Yañgot

Before paper learned
the discipline of silence
before ink learned
how to obey a hand
the land was already speaking

Not in letters
but in breath
in slope and shadow
in the long discourse  of rivers
teaching stones how to stay

This title was never filed
It walked barefoot
along ridgelines
slept in the ribs of mountains
and woke each morning
inside planted seed

It was sung
not signed
passed palm to palm
through the warmth of labor
through names spoken softly
so the earth would hear

Before maps flattened the world
into squares and claims
feet already knew
where the soil turned sacred
where iron must not enter
where bones were resting

Then came paper
starched with authority
ink heavy with certainty
asking the land to explain itself
asking memory to kneel

But the terraces kept holding rain
the forests kept their counsel
and the dead stayed
exactly where they were told

Native title does not begin
with permission
It begins with belonging

It survives erasure
survives fire
survives the slow forgetting
that law sometimes calls order

Burn the paper
and it remains
Let the ink fade
and it deepens

Because the land remembers
in ways courts cannot summon
and we remember
because we are still standing
where our names
were first learned by soil

Note on Community Membership
I am a member of the Kankanaey, an indigenous people from the Cordillera Region of the Philippines.

About the Poet
Cheryl L. Daytec-Yañgot resides in Baguio, Cordillera Region, Philippines.
Read the poet's biography and Wax Poetry and Art publications on Cheryl L. Daytec-Yañgot's Artist Page.

This poem is collected in Poetry World #16, published in the Wax Poetry and Art Library.

Keywords: native title, anestral lands, indigenous territories

Previously published in First Nations Poetry Magazine:
March 18th
by Cheyenne Sky

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