Anthropology Is Not Innocent — I Am Kurdish
They say anthropology
is the study of culture—
but whose culture?
And by whose permission?
They dress it in curiosity,
but I see the old shadow
of explorers with notebooks
and flags hidden in their boots.
Anthropology was never just study—
it was ownership.
It was mapping our bones,
naming our gods,
labeling our pain
for museum shelves.
They didn’t come to understand—
they came to collect.
To define.
To shrink.
To rewrite us
until we sounded like
their reflection in a textbook.
I am not your subject.
I am not your artifact.
I am not a footnote
in your empire’s thesis.
I am Kurdish.
I come from a people
you tried to catalog
before you buried their names
under borders you drew.
You think knowledge is power.
I know silence is survival.
I am not here
to be explained.
I am here to resist
every word
that tries to cage me.
I am not anthropology.
I am memory.
I am continuity.
I am Kurdish,
and I refuse to be studied.