Reclaiming the Vision: Native Voices for the Eighth Generation

by Lee Francis (Editor), James Bruchac (Editor)

Reclaiming the Vision has its genesis in a gathering of more than 200 North American Native writers which took place in July of 1992. That landmark conference, called Returning The Gift, made the encouragement of Native American youth one of its main goals.
Through major funding from the Bay Foundation, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, that conference and a series of Outreach Workshops conducted by Native American writers in Native classrooms around the continent - from New York City to Alaska - focused on the place of literature in the lives of young Native Americans. Special attention was paid to the ways in which writing can foster hope, build self-esteem, provide guidance and shape a vision of a better future. A Dissemination Grant was provided by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to help share some of the results of the festival through a special publication.
The result is this carefully edited volume that blends together work from many of the Native writers who have been a part of Returning The Gift and Wordcraft Circle, the mentoring organization that is an outgrowth of the 1992 festival. Edited by Lee Francis and James Bruchac, it includes transcripts from the plenary sessions of Returning The Gift, sections on storytelling, the writing of poetry, fiction and autobiography, exercises which use Native American writing to generate work from student writers, and an anthology of poetry and prose by American Indian students.
Reclaiming the Vision is a book to be treasured by anyone interested in Native American literature or the teaching of Native American students. If you are looking for a vision, look this way.

Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

Reviews

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Adapt and survive. Those are important words for us all. Learn the new language so that you can say your own name and the names of your people. We choose these words, just as we choose to be writers. Garcialosso de la Vega, the Inca, was the first over 400 years ago. The Florida of the Inca and the Royal Commentaries of the Incas, the history of his own people were the two great volumes written in Spanish by that first modern "American Indian" writer, child of a Spanish nobleman and a Quechun princess of the Inca state. Mixed blood, but he knew who he was and told the stories of his people and this hemisphere.

To adapt is not the same as to assimilate. To survive is to continue. Control of the language, choosing the words that describe your life and the lives of your people, means controlling more of your own destiny, your past, present and future. The circle of your family and your culture.
Joseph Bruchac III (Abenaki)

I am part of the community of human people, and bird people and animal people and fish people, and the green people, and the rock people. Bringing all those parts of myself into writing is what I would call integrity, and I think in the twentieth and twenty-first century, these emerging Native images are coming from many different communities, merging, blending, weaving together. It's not an individualistic voice, it's a community voice. I find this very wonderful, because at the same time that I am writing from these many communities, I am being fed by these communities. Beth Brant (Bay of Quinte Mohawk)

I would like to speak about the earth, Mother Earth, and the way American Indian ecology could help cure our sick mother. It's our ecological way to bring all the learned people of the world to try and cure the world, to try and cure all the new sicknesses popping up they cannot understand. They cannot cure them because, I believe, those sicknesses, those maladies, are coming from our sick mother, and as long as the Mother Earth can't be cured, we're going to be a disappearing people on this planet, and all that is living on this planet will also disappear. Eleanor Sioui (Huron/Wyandot)

Using our literatures to reestablish health, not only in our communities, but to establish health in those sick communities out there that are destroying not only our world, but almost the entire world around us is important. We see our literatures, our voice, as a mechanism of healing ourselves, as medicine to the societies, bringing the possibility of a better future, a more healthy future, not only for our children, but also the children of other peoples in the world. Jeannette C. Armstrong (Okanagan)

An amazing overview that stands the test of time, still relevant and important now more than ever. Thoreau said that the preservation of the world was in wildness, and I agree, but more so the indigenous teachings and perspectives on nature is the key to the saving of the world.

For a deep reading exercise, I did some of the prompts in the book, with mixed results. I deeply respect and believe in Robin Wall Kimmerer’s “grammar of animacy” that speaks of all of the natural world being alive and sentient; and I do agree that we don’t have a word that really encompasses their being, but still, it is uncomfortable to step into these shoes. But worthwhile. I added the photos for fun, and it was a beautiful mind-opening exercise.

Writing Exercises:
1. Imagine yourself going to a river or a feature of nature such as a mountain or lake that is very powerful. What would you say to that natural feature in a poem? Think of what you would call it (in the way the Cherokee call a river "Long Person.") What kind of help might it be able to give you? Now write a poem in which you address that natural feature.


The Aligned One
I come seeking something larger than myself, larger
Than my turmoils, my angst, my crooked thoughts.
With each unwavering line of the water meeting shore,
Trees meeting mountain, mountain meeting sky,
Shadows meeting light, I learn. I call you Aligned One,
A culmination of all the beauty in the universe.

2. Look at an old photograph of your own grandfather or grandmother and write a poem in which you describe what you see. It may be European, African, Asian, or even American Indian. You may want to include a word or two in the language spoken by your ancestors if English was not their mother tongue.



My GRANDMA'S SMILE
Eyes closed, hands clasped, before you went gray, before I knew you,
A smile and maybe a laugh caught in time, the only one. You are the
Ammoin* (mother) of my father, and you were expelled from your
Country after the war, and came to the United States to find your life.
We couldn’t talk to each other, not knowing the other’s language,
And you never smiled much, until you had to go to the nursing home,
And with care and food and care, you bloomed and became this woman
Again, smiling, glowing, alive and blooming like a marjetica* (daisy).
*Words in my grandparent’s native language Gottscheer, an ethnically German enclave in what is now Slovenia.

3. Write a poem talking as one of the Old Ones (tree, river, grandparent, neighborhood ... ) or speaking to an Old One.


REVERED RIVER
Revered River, you are me, and I am you, and I hear and speak your voice,
With gratitude and respect. I flow so gently in places, near a tall tree,
Or beloved wildflowers or mosses, and I roar in others, speaking so loudly
For all to hear, speaking my story, my music, and a plea to stop poisoning
Water and air in this land and on this planet. I am happy to provide water
And beauty and I will for my forever, until the mountains collapse and my
Source is gone, even if you are gone. But there will be no one to photograph
Me, or listen to my song, and celebrate and tell of my power and beauty.
My majesty and power is your power, is your voice and you belong here.


4. Write a poem about your personal family heritage. Describe your parents and grandparents and what they have given you. This should include not only physical heirlooms, but also emotional remembrances.


FAMILY

My mother’s mother died when she was five years old,
Lost to tuberculosis, but I heard her extolled
As glowing and effervescent, the life of the party,
so perhaps I got something in my soul from her, sparkly,
something that taught me to walk and wander.
My mother’s father died before I was born, a talker,

Also well liked and well known in the same small town
so I like to think that’s where I got my storytelling gene.
I was only 5 years old when my father’s father died,
And he loved music and played the accordion, with pride,
Energetic Polkas and ethnic German folk songs,
Perhaps the reason I love music my whole lifelong.

So I only ever knew my father’s mother, and imperfectly so;
she never learned to speak English, so there was so much unknown,
and other barriers like a sorrow barrier, being so very alone
in her life with no other family nearby, no valued touchstone,
and I didn’t know her well enough to know what she may

have given me, but I am certain through her, I found my way
to work with refugees and immigrants in my career in her honor,
honoring her journey here so that I could have this wonder
of a life. From my beloved mother, I got her generous and loving
spirit, love of music and love of travel and photographing
all the small and large things that make a life gorgeous and rich.

She was my everything. From my father, I got a strong work ethic
and love of crosswords and practical things like politics.
I was born to a very small family that is scattered and dwindling,
But I am fiercely grateful for my life and my ancestry as little
As it may be and will sing of my grace and luck and love endlessly.

5. Choose a color which you feel describes your life right now. Write a poem in which that color is a central image used in different contexts.



GREEN
Green is the color of my song right now, my poem, my novel,
The color of freshness, spring, summer, the color
Of life, of being alive, of eating the greenest of vegetables,
Touching the greenest of leaves and needles and grass,
To see and revel in the green aspen leaves, the green
Of the lake reflecting the glorious forest, the green
Of my love’s eyes, the green of the sea glass dangling
From my ears, burnished by time and waves to translucence,
To the green they talk of when they talk about being new, trying
Something new, stretching your soul.