What does this poem mean? "who will teach me" by Nancy Wood?

Question:

What does this poem mean? "who will teach me" by Nancy Wood?

Who will teach me now that my fathers
Have gone with the buffalo?
Who will tell of times I wish I knew?
Who will direct my journey
So that I will come out right?
The years are clouds which
Cover my ancestors.
Let them sleep.
I shall find my way alone.

What is the metaphor?
What are the two things that the speaker compares? in what way are they similiar and in what way are they different?

Above are our homework. The questions really don't make sense to me.
I think there is a change in the speaker's attitude towards her future. but for the rest, i'm not so sure.

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:

a metaphor is a figure of speech that says one thing is another without using "like" or "as". For example, "his muscles are steel" not like steel. as the first answerer says, a metaphor here is: "The years are clouds." (not like the clouds = simile).
The speaker compares time present and time gone by when the ancestors lived. They are similar in the sense that exasperation in search for ancestors does not help much. she resolves ,"Let them sleep./ I shall find my way alone." No one to give directions. They are different in terms of time. The speaker's ancestors lived at a different period. There's an obvious temporal difference but similar spatial setting.