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Native Voices: Indigenous American Poetry, Craft, and Conversations
Poetry. Literary Nonfiction. Essays. Native American Studies. NATIVE VOICES is a comprehensive collection of the most urgent Indigenous American poetry and prose spanning the mid 20th Century to today. Featuring forty-two poets, including Simon Ortiz, Leslie Marmon Silko, Luci Tapahonso, Joy Harjo, Sherwin Bitsui, Heid E. Erdrich, Layli Long Soldier, and Orlando White; original influence essays by Diane Glancy on Lorca, Chrystos on Audre Lorde, Louise Erdrich on Elizabeth Bishop, LeAnne Howe on W. D. Snodgrass, Allison Hedge Coke on Delmore Schwartz, Suzanne Rancourt on Ai, and M. L. Smoker on Richard Hugo, among others; and a selection of resonant work chosen from previous generations of Native artists.
554 pages, Paperback
Published April 1, 2019
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January 12, 2022
A must read, must keep-on-your-shelves sort of book. We gifted this to all MFA students in Nature Writing and Poetry at Western Colorado University --- for good reason! Full of beauty, from beginning to end.
August 24, 2022
“It’s not humankind after all
nor is it culture
that limits us.
It is the vastness
we do not enter.
It is the stars
we do not let own us.”
Simon Ortiz
“Gi ga gikinoo’amawininim
Ezhi-noondawangidwa maanidoog
Ezhi-aanzinaagodizoying dibikong
Ezhi-dabasendamoying boochigo dibishkoo
Bezhig
Manidoominens giizis agogwaazod
Bakaanizid.
I will teach you
To hear the spirits shake
To wear the northern lights
To shift shapes in the night
To believe in the beautiful humility
Of one
Bead sun sewn
Differently.”
MARGARET NOODIN
Anishinaabe, Ojibwe language
By brilliantly juxtaposing a boring poem from Wallace Stevens with a powerful one by Simon Ortiz, the editors make it clear, there is ANOTHER WAY OF SEEING, another way of beholding art, nature, humanity, our country than the colonial, European, Christian domination. I am getting it or starting to get it. Barry Lopez practiced this, too, trying to learn the land he found himself on. When I recently read the Last of the Dinosaurs, I was so sad for the violent, shoddy way of describing the natural processes of the land and the animals. I have tried to tune my mind to the nuance of reverence in my study of the earth, and I can accept science’s more dry terms while my heart is singing, holy, holy, holy. That came from Annie Dillard at first, and now is reinforced and being enriched by Native voices I am cherishing.
PEOPLE FROM THE STARS Carter Revard
Indigenous name: Nompehwahteh, Osage and Ponca heritage
Wazhazhe come from the stars
By their choice, not by falling
Or being thrown out
Of the heavenly bars like Satan
Into Europe,
And we are invited back
Whenever we choose to go;
But we joined the people of death
And moved to another village
(we call it Ho-e-ga)
Where time began; we made our fire places
And made out bodies of
The golden eagle and the cedar tree,
Of mountain lion and buffalo,
Of redbird, black bear, of the
Great elk and of thunder so that we
May live to see old age
And go back to the stars.
…
DRIVING IN OKLAHOMA Carter Revard
Indigenous name: Nompehwahteh, Osage and Ponca heritage
On humming rubber along this white concrete,
Lighthearted between the gravities
Of source and destination like a man
Halfway to the moon…
Over prairie swells rising
and falling…when
-a meadowlark
Comes sailing across my windshield
With breast shining yellow
And five notes pierce
The windroar like a flash
Of nectar on mind…
And wanting
To move again through country that a bird
Has defined wholly with song,
And maybe next time to see how
He flies so easily, when he sings.
Speaking by Simon Ortiz
Acoma Pueblo Indian
I take him outside
under the trees,
have him stand on the ground.
We listen to the crickets,
cicadas, million years old sound.
Ants come by us.
I tell them, "This is he, my son.
This boy is looking at you.
I am speaking for him.”
The crickets, cicadas,
the ants. the millions of years
are watching us,
hearing us.
My son murmurs infant words,
speaking, small laughter
bubbles from him.
Tree leaves tremble.
They listen to this boy
speaking for me.
Culture and the Universe BY SIMON J. ORTIZ
Acoma Pueblo Indian
Two nights ago
in the canyon darkness,
only the half-moon and stars,
only mere men.
Prayer, faith, love,
existence.
We are measured
by vastness beyond ourselves.
Dark is light.
Stone is rising.
I don’t know
if humankind understands
culture: the act
of being human
is not easy knowledge.
With painted wooden sticks
and feathers, we journey
into the canyon toward stone,
a massive presence
in midwinter.
We stop.
Lean into me.
The universe
sings in quiet meditation.
We are wordless:
I am in you.
Without knowing why
culture needs our knowledge,
we are one self in the canyon.
And the stone wall
I lean upon spins me
wordless and silent
to the reach of stars
and to the heavens within.
It’s not humankind after all
nor is it culture
that limits us.
It is the vastness
we do not enter.
It is the stars
we do not let own us.
Simon Ortiz writes in an essay about his father, song, and their native language, Acoma:
My father sings, and I listen.
Song at the very beginning was experience. There was no division between experience and expression. Take a child, for example, when he makes a song at his play, especially when he is alone. I his song, he tells about the experience of the sensations he is feeling at the moment with his body and mind… both perception of that experience and his expression of it.
You have to recognize that language is more than just a group of words and more than a functional mechanism. It is a spiritual energy that is available to all… We begin to become careless with how we use and perceive with language… The song as expression is an opening from inside of yourself to outside and from outside of yourself to inside but not in the sense that there are separate states of yourself. Instead it is a joining and an opening together. Song is the experience of that opening or road…
My father teaches that the song is part of the way you are supposed to recognize everything, that the singing of it is a way of recognizing this all-inclusiveness because it is a way of expressing yourself and perceiving.
ERNESTINE HAYES
Tlingit (gunalcheesh- thank you)
THE SPOKEN FOREST
Brown bear dances in the dark in the dark forest in the night to the remembered melody of a happy song his mother once her grandmother hum- the nearly lost memory of a song meant for this time of the night, to take away our grief, to help us laugh again, to see the bear surely to spin beneath the darkly spinning stars.
…
Spruce and hemlock whisper one to another. Our history our histories our story our stories our memory our memories our life our lives who we are what we are how we are where we are spruce and hemlock watch.
…
I was thinking about the forest one day
And it came to me-
Our stories,
Our songs,
Our names,
Our history,
Our memories,
Are not lost.
…
Those beings who live in the spoken forest.
They are holding everything for us.
All the truths my grandmother declared are as plan as the world.
CHRYSTOS, Menominee writer and two-spirit activist who identifies as an Urban Indian.
SHE HAD TO GO
To the Fort Steal Museum in BC
In order to see a portrait in oils
Of her Great Grandfather Chief Isadore
Which is the property, technically,
Of the Queen of England
Whom she’ll never meet
She’s not allowed
To reproduce or photograph this painting
We must ask permission
To have the pictures of our relative
From white strangers
Who want us to pay
I want to know how
They can claim rights
Over those they’ve wronged
If they can own our ancestors
Are we slaves
PALESTINIANS & INDIANS FEEL
Her eternal arms
Earth embracing our dusty Spirits
In a slow curve of rocks rising
To kiss the sky
See small hills fragrant
With sage or olive groves
Roll over our sorrows
Hear honeyed stones whisper
Our stories of genocide
Smell clouds echoing landscape
In surprising swoops
No matter
What they do to us
Kill us, kill our trees
Kill our children
Kill our culture
Tear apart our homes
Take our food to claim as their onw
Our place breathes in our lungs
Our place knows us
Hold us
This place remembers us
This cannot be killed
LESLIE MARMON SILKO
Laguna Pueblo
LOVE POEM
Rain smell comes with the wind
out of the southwest.
Smell of sand dunes
tall grass glistening
in the rain.
Warm raindrops that fall easy
(this woman)
The summer is born.
Smell of her breathing new life
small gray toads on
damp sand.
(this woman)
whispering to dark wide leaves
white moon blossoms dripping
tracks in the
sand.
Rain smell
I am full of hunger
deep and longing to touch
wet tall grass, green and strong beneath.
This woman loved a man
and she breathed to him
her damp earth song.
I was haunted by this story
I remember it in cottonwood leaves
their fragrance in
the shade.
I remember it in the wide blue sky
when the rain smell comes with the wind.
THE STORYYTELLER’S ESCAPE (excerpts)
The storyteller keeps the stories
All the escape stories
“The sun is a shawl on my back
Its heat makes tassels that
Shimmer down my arms.”
She was resting close to the boulder
Hoping the child would tell-
Otherwise
How could they remember her
How could they cry for her
Without this story?
About this time
The sun lifted off from her shoulders like a butterfly.
Essay: At Laguna Pueblo, many individual words have their own stories. So when one is telling a story and one is using words to tell a story, each word that one is speaking has a story of its own, too. Often the speakers, or tellers, will go into these word stories, creating an elaborate structure of stories within stories… This perspective on narrative- of story within story, the idea that one story is only the beginning of many stories and the sense that stories never truly end- represents an important contribution of Native American culture to the English language.
JOY HARJO
MVSKOKE
A POSTCOLONIAL TALE
Everyday is a reenactment of the creation story. We emerge from dense unspeakable material, through the shimmering power of dreaming stuff.
This is the first world, and the last.
Once we abandoned ourselves for television, the box that separates the dreamer from the dreaming. It was as if we were stolen, put into a bag carried on the back of a whiteman who pretends to own the earth and the sky. In the sack were all the people of the world. We fought until there was a hole in the bag.
When we fell we were not aware of falling. We were driving to work, or to the mall. The children were in school learning subtraction with guns, although they appeared to be in classes.
We found ourselves somewhere near the diminishing point of civilization, not far from the trickster's bag of tricks. Everything was as we imagined it. The earth and stars, every creature and leaf imagined with us.
The imagining needs praise as does any living thing.
We are evidence of this praise.
The imagination conversely illumines us, speaks with us, sings with us.
Stories and songs are like humans who when they laugh are indestructible.
No story or song will translate the full impact of falling, or the inverse power of rising up.
Our children put down their guns when we did to imagine with us.
We imagined the shining link between the heart and the sun.
We imagined tables of food for everyone.
We imagined the songs.
The imagination conversely illumines us, speaks with us, sings with us, loves us.
EAGLE POEM
To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more
That you can’t see, can’t hear;
Can’t know except in moments
Steadily growing, and in languages
That aren’t always sound but other
Circles of motion.
Like eagle that Sunday morning
Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky
In wind, swept our hearts clean
With sacred wings.
We see you, see ourselves and know
That we must take the utmost care
And kindness in all things.
Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and breathe, knowing
We are truly blessed because we
Were born, and die soon within a
True circle of motion,
Like eagle rounding out the morning
Inside us.
We pray that it will be done
In beauty.
In beauty.
Essay: The first place to start is with the land, for context. That’s what I’ve been taught by every indigenous culture that I have come into contact with, including my Mvskoke people. I have come to believe that the earth lives within us; we essentially are the earth. I was an outside girl, and I liked to be alone. I learned much that way- as I was always being spoken to- sunrise was my favorite time. It was the plants who made their presences know then, the creatures of the earth, the sky elements, the stones.
GORDON HENRY JR.
Anishinaabe (White Earth Chippewa)
Just as we would rather be singing singing singer, the echo coming from some filmy shore as we pass, paddling paddling paddler, gliding without enough names for water, over the surfaces named water, even as we believe this is poetry…the voice alone, at a station, perhaps, singing, singing, singer, without enough names for lyric, for an uncertain longing, with sounds we call lyrical, even as the words end somewhere…the verb singing breathing breather, breath, without even names for poetry, poem, poet, coming to rest, as if we could be poet or anything other than breathing, breathing, breathing, breather, poet, breathing, breath, breathing, singing, sounding, singing, singer, sounding, poet, singing, the sound, sounding, song, poet, breathing, sound, breathing, song, breather, breath.
KIMBERLY BLAESER
Anishinaabe (White Earth Nation )
Miigwech (thank you)
OF FRACTALS AND PINK FLOWERING
Imagine the geometry of flower
Is hunger for balance,
Is my child’s hand on the gears of beauty
Layering and interlocking color.
Picture me prone, a small center point-
One copper dot in the white Minnesota winter.
Picture my mother drying her hands
Placing the compass and spinning
Arcs and intersecting curves,
Woodland flowers growing
Into many-petaled mandalas
Into limitlessness: a universe
Of circles, of symmetry- sun,
Stars, blooms, and orange-hued fruits,
The berry, squash, ripe tomato wonder
of belonging.
My own spirograph bursts
Rush forth ornate like paisley, like fireworks
Against dark summer sky. Spokes and wheels
And gears meshing-each pencil thrust
A tentative mark, a hopeful threading
Of the cogs of longing. Imagine my fingers
Holding tight to the friction,
Watch the intricate flourishes appear
On white paper- the tabula rasa
Transformed by oval,
Just another language
Another voice saying hello
To the spiraling bodies of self.
REWRITING YOUR LIFE
not just the past
that matters the most,
but those haunting scenes
that make anger and panic rise in your throat
at the domestic quarrels of strangers.
The same sort
that makes my pulse pound in my ears
to drown out that saccharine alcohol voice
of the women two booths away.
Erasing, replacing
the longings that arose from want
the causes
of your jacket fetish
the causes
of the bathtub in my parent's yard
the causes
of all old patterns stumbling on to renew themselves
of personal quirks
and other small tortures.
…
The little tug in our voices
we wash down with complimentary water
at public podiums and in banquet halls
it is the pull of the small store of joy
of a people born poor
studying in school to be ashamed
it is the shiny marbles
our children shot across muddy school yards
and then washed and lined neatly to dry
it is fresh winter snow served with cream and sugar
nickel tent movies
and hurrah for the fourth of july!
It is your memories too now
that raise the flesh on my arms and legs.
And perhaps in time we can write across
that other life with this one,
but never enough to obscure it
just enough to make a new pattern
a new design
pitifully inadequate perhaps
for all that has happened -
but beautiful as only loved pain can be.
And so I write across your life that way
with mine
I write across your life with love
that comes from my own pain
and then, of course,
I write your face across my pain.
ALLISON ADELLE HEDGE COKE
Huron, Metis, French Canadian, Luso, and Mixed Southeastern Native
AMERICA, I SING YOU BACK
America, I sing back. Sing back what sung you in.
Sing back the moment you cherished breath.
Sing you home into yourself and back to reason.
Before America began to sing, I sung her to sleep,
held her cradleboard, wept her into day.
My song gave her creation, prepared her delivery,
held her severed cord beautifully beaded.
My song helped her stand, held her hand for first steps,
nourished her very being, fed her, placed her three sisters strong.
My song comforted her as she battled my reason
broke my long-held footing sure, as any child might do.
As she pushed herself away, forced me to remove myself,
as I cried this country, my song grew roses in each tear’s fall.
My blood-veined rivers, painted pipestone quarries
circled canyons, while she made herself maiden fine.
But here I am, here I am, here I remain high on each and every peak,
carefully rumbling her great underbelly, prepared to pour forth singing—
and sing again I will, as I have always done.
Never silenced unless in the company of strangers, singing
the stoic face, polite repose, polite while dancing deep inside, polite
Mother of her world. Sister of myself.
When my song sings aloud again. When I call her back to cradle.
Call her to peer into waters, to behold herself in dark and light,
day and night, call her to sing along, call her to mature, to envision—
then, she will quake herself over. My song will make it so.
When she grows far past her self-considered purpose,
I will sing her back, sing her back. I will sing. Oh I will—I do.
America, I sing back. Sing back what sung you in.
STREAMING
a dream echoing light/dark, some of us flew then
Albireo dreaming— streaming
Ya, yan, e, tih
kettle
Yah, re, sah Ya, yan quagh, ke
beans, cornfield
Yat, o, regh, shas ta
I am hungry
…
In a dream where time poses as dust,
Where echo-wrinkles reverberate
Consciousness signals against
Savannahs-
Sandhills overhead, their chortling
Carries snow geese back to councils.
In this streaming, seasons shift
Far past distressed unravelings,
Where grasses seed sparseness
Commingle alongside wrinkle, weavings, time,
Signaling light shocks spreading fingerlike
Across blue/white world.
…
Here in the cylindrical and spherical,
In the curvilinear space
Its echo-wrinkle reverberations,
Discernments, definite dissonance;
Here, intuition/memory intersect,
Prophesy source into beingness,
We in certain presence- being- at all times.
DEBORAH MIRANDA
Esselen/Chumash [Ohlone-Costanoan Esselen]
A POEM
We here
Are composed of earth
Valleys and rivulets
Vines loaded with grapes
An abundance of roses
We Indians on this coast
Carry on
Very civil old and young
…
We treat with confidence and
Good-will
All lives
Always care for
The whole
Multitude
A kind of wild
god
Song of II’UR (one of the Kumeyaay words for Juniper)
TEARS OF THE SUN
The river is full of mica.
When we swim, our bodies
Shimmer, wrapped in constellations
Of stars. Our forearms swirl
And sparkle like the Milky Way,
Legs glint with galaxies.
Our hands glitter gold as if dipped
In stardust. In July’s white-hot
Sun, sparks of the cosmos
Bathe us in the dust of all
That has come before us.
See how we are embers
Waiting to blaze and ignite.
See how the river dresses us-
Lost, stolen, dispossessed, broken-
In living bones of granite,
In the light of our Ancestors.
nor is it culture
that limits us.
It is the vastness
we do not enter.
It is the stars
we do not let own us.”
Simon Ortiz
“Gi ga gikinoo’amawininim
Ezhi-noondawangidwa maanidoog
Ezhi-aanzinaagodizoying dibikong
Ezhi-dabasendamoying boochigo dibishkoo
Bezhig
Manidoominens giizis agogwaazod
Bakaanizid.
I will teach you
To hear the spirits shake
To wear the northern lights
To shift shapes in the night
To believe in the beautiful humility
Of one
Bead sun sewn
Differently.”
MARGARET NOODIN
Anishinaabe, Ojibwe language
By brilliantly juxtaposing a boring poem from Wallace Stevens with a powerful one by Simon Ortiz, the editors make it clear, there is ANOTHER WAY OF SEEING, another way of beholding art, nature, humanity, our country than the colonial, European, Christian domination. I am getting it or starting to get it. Barry Lopez practiced this, too, trying to learn the land he found himself on. When I recently read the Last of the Dinosaurs, I was so sad for the violent, shoddy way of describing the natural processes of the land and the animals. I have tried to tune my mind to the nuance of reverence in my study of the earth, and I can accept science’s more dry terms while my heart is singing, holy, holy, holy. That came from Annie Dillard at first, and now is reinforced and being enriched by Native voices I am cherishing.
PEOPLE FROM THE STARS Carter Revard
Indigenous name: Nompehwahteh, Osage and Ponca heritage
Wazhazhe come from the stars
By their choice, not by falling
Or being thrown out
Of the heavenly bars like Satan
Into Europe,
And we are invited back
Whenever we choose to go;
But we joined the people of death
And moved to another village
(we call it Ho-e-ga)
Where time began; we made our fire places
And made out bodies of
The golden eagle and the cedar tree,
Of mountain lion and buffalo,
Of redbird, black bear, of the
Great elk and of thunder so that we
May live to see old age
And go back to the stars.
…
DRIVING IN OKLAHOMA Carter Revard
Indigenous name: Nompehwahteh, Osage and Ponca heritage
On humming rubber along this white concrete,
Lighthearted between the gravities
Of source and destination like a man
Halfway to the moon…
Over prairie swells rising
and falling…when
-a meadowlark
Comes sailing across my windshield
With breast shining yellow
And five notes pierce
The windroar like a flash
Of nectar on mind…
And wanting
To move again through country that a bird
Has defined wholly with song,
And maybe next time to see how
He flies so easily, when he sings.
Speaking by Simon Ortiz
Acoma Pueblo Indian
I take him outside
under the trees,
have him stand on the ground.
We listen to the crickets,
cicadas, million years old sound.
Ants come by us.
I tell them, "This is he, my son.
This boy is looking at you.
I am speaking for him.”
The crickets, cicadas,
the ants. the millions of years
are watching us,
hearing us.
My son murmurs infant words,
speaking, small laughter
bubbles from him.
Tree leaves tremble.
They listen to this boy
speaking for me.
Culture and the Universe BY SIMON J. ORTIZ
Acoma Pueblo Indian
Two nights ago
in the canyon darkness,
only the half-moon and stars,
only mere men.
Prayer, faith, love,
existence.
We are measured
by vastness beyond ourselves.
Dark is light.
Stone is rising.
I don’t know
if humankind understands
culture: the act
of being human
is not easy knowledge.
With painted wooden sticks
and feathers, we journey
into the canyon toward stone,
a massive presence
in midwinter.
We stop.
Lean into me.
The universe
sings in quiet meditation.
We are wordless:
I am in you.
Without knowing why
culture needs our knowledge,
we are one self in the canyon.
And the stone wall
I lean upon spins me
wordless and silent
to the reach of stars
and to the heavens within.
It’s not humankind after all
nor is it culture
that limits us.
It is the vastness
we do not enter.
It is the stars
we do not let own us.
Simon Ortiz writes in an essay about his father, song, and their native language, Acoma:
My father sings, and I listen.
Song at the very beginning was experience. There was no division between experience and expression. Take a child, for example, when he makes a song at his play, especially when he is alone. I his song, he tells about the experience of the sensations he is feeling at the moment with his body and mind… both perception of that experience and his expression of it.
You have to recognize that language is more than just a group of words and more than a functional mechanism. It is a spiritual energy that is available to all… We begin to become careless with how we use and perceive with language… The song as expression is an opening from inside of yourself to outside and from outside of yourself to inside but not in the sense that there are separate states of yourself. Instead it is a joining and an opening together. Song is the experience of that opening or road…
My father teaches that the song is part of the way you are supposed to recognize everything, that the singing of it is a way of recognizing this all-inclusiveness because it is a way of expressing yourself and perceiving.
ERNESTINE HAYES
Tlingit (gunalcheesh- thank you)
THE SPOKEN FOREST
Brown bear dances in the dark in the dark forest in the night to the remembered melody of a happy song his mother once her grandmother hum- the nearly lost memory of a song meant for this time of the night, to take away our grief, to help us laugh again, to see the bear surely to spin beneath the darkly spinning stars.
…
Spruce and hemlock whisper one to another. Our history our histories our story our stories our memory our memories our life our lives who we are what we are how we are where we are spruce and hemlock watch.
…
I was thinking about the forest one day
And it came to me-
Our stories,
Our songs,
Our names,
Our history,
Our memories,
Are not lost.
…
Those beings who live in the spoken forest.
They are holding everything for us.
All the truths my grandmother declared are as plan as the world.
CHRYSTOS, Menominee writer and two-spirit activist who identifies as an Urban Indian.
SHE HAD TO GO
To the Fort Steal Museum in BC
In order to see a portrait in oils
Of her Great Grandfather Chief Isadore
Which is the property, technically,
Of the Queen of England
Whom she’ll never meet
She’s not allowed
To reproduce or photograph this painting
We must ask permission
To have the pictures of our relative
From white strangers
Who want us to pay
I want to know how
They can claim rights
Over those they’ve wronged
If they can own our ancestors
Are we slaves
PALESTINIANS & INDIANS FEEL
Her eternal arms
Earth embracing our dusty Spirits
In a slow curve of rocks rising
To kiss the sky
See small hills fragrant
With sage or olive groves
Roll over our sorrows
Hear honeyed stones whisper
Our stories of genocide
Smell clouds echoing landscape
In surprising swoops
No matter
What they do to us
Kill us, kill our trees
Kill our children
Kill our culture
Tear apart our homes
Take our food to claim as their onw
Our place breathes in our lungs
Our place knows us
Hold us
This place remembers us
This cannot be killed
LESLIE MARMON SILKO
Laguna Pueblo
LOVE POEM
Rain smell comes with the wind
out of the southwest.
Smell of sand dunes
tall grass glistening
in the rain.
Warm raindrops that fall easy
(this woman)
The summer is born.
Smell of her breathing new life
small gray toads on
damp sand.
(this woman)
whispering to dark wide leaves
white moon blossoms dripping
tracks in the
sand.
Rain smell
I am full of hunger
deep and longing to touch
wet tall grass, green and strong beneath.
This woman loved a man
and she breathed to him
her damp earth song.
I was haunted by this story
I remember it in cottonwood leaves
their fragrance in
the shade.
I remember it in the wide blue sky
when the rain smell comes with the wind.
THE STORYYTELLER’S ESCAPE (excerpts)
The storyteller keeps the stories
All the escape stories
“The sun is a shawl on my back
Its heat makes tassels that
Shimmer down my arms.”
She was resting close to the boulder
Hoping the child would tell-
Otherwise
How could they remember her
How could they cry for her
Without this story?
About this time
The sun lifted off from her shoulders like a butterfly.
Essay: At Laguna Pueblo, many individual words have their own stories. So when one is telling a story and one is using words to tell a story, each word that one is speaking has a story of its own, too. Often the speakers, or tellers, will go into these word stories, creating an elaborate structure of stories within stories… This perspective on narrative- of story within story, the idea that one story is only the beginning of many stories and the sense that stories never truly end- represents an important contribution of Native American culture to the English language.
JOY HARJO
MVSKOKE
A POSTCOLONIAL TALE
Everyday is a reenactment of the creation story. We emerge from dense unspeakable material, through the shimmering power of dreaming stuff.
This is the first world, and the last.
Once we abandoned ourselves for television, the box that separates the dreamer from the dreaming. It was as if we were stolen, put into a bag carried on the back of a whiteman who pretends to own the earth and the sky. In the sack were all the people of the world. We fought until there was a hole in the bag.
When we fell we were not aware of falling. We were driving to work, or to the mall. The children were in school learning subtraction with guns, although they appeared to be in classes.
We found ourselves somewhere near the diminishing point of civilization, not far from the trickster's bag of tricks. Everything was as we imagined it. The earth and stars, every creature and leaf imagined with us.
The imagining needs praise as does any living thing.
We are evidence of this praise.
The imagination conversely illumines us, speaks with us, sings with us.
Stories and songs are like humans who when they laugh are indestructible.
No story or song will translate the full impact of falling, or the inverse power of rising up.
Our children put down their guns when we did to imagine with us.
We imagined the shining link between the heart and the sun.
We imagined tables of food for everyone.
We imagined the songs.
The imagination conversely illumines us, speaks with us, sings with us, loves us.
EAGLE POEM
To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more
That you can’t see, can’t hear;
Can’t know except in moments
Steadily growing, and in languages
That aren’t always sound but other
Circles of motion.
Like eagle that Sunday morning
Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky
In wind, swept our hearts clean
With sacred wings.
We see you, see ourselves and know
That we must take the utmost care
And kindness in all things.
Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and breathe, knowing
We are truly blessed because we
Were born, and die soon within a
True circle of motion,
Like eagle rounding out the morning
Inside us.
We pray that it will be done
In beauty.
In beauty.
Essay: The first place to start is with the land, for context. That’s what I’ve been taught by every indigenous culture that I have come into contact with, including my Mvskoke people. I have come to believe that the earth lives within us; we essentially are the earth. I was an outside girl, and I liked to be alone. I learned much that way- as I was always being spoken to- sunrise was my favorite time. It was the plants who made their presences know then, the creatures of the earth, the sky elements, the stones.
GORDON HENRY JR.
Anishinaabe (White Earth Chippewa)
Just as we would rather be singing singing singer, the echo coming from some filmy shore as we pass, paddling paddling paddler, gliding without enough names for water, over the surfaces named water, even as we believe this is poetry…the voice alone, at a station, perhaps, singing, singing, singer, without enough names for lyric, for an uncertain longing, with sounds we call lyrical, even as the words end somewhere…the verb singing breathing breather, breath, without even names for poetry, poem, poet, coming to rest, as if we could be poet or anything other than breathing, breathing, breathing, breather, poet, breathing, breath, breathing, singing, sounding, singing, singer, sounding, poet, singing, the sound, sounding, song, poet, breathing, sound, breathing, song, breather, breath.
KIMBERLY BLAESER
Anishinaabe (White Earth Nation )
Miigwech (thank you)
OF FRACTALS AND PINK FLOWERING
Imagine the geometry of flower
Is hunger for balance,
Is my child’s hand on the gears of beauty
Layering and interlocking color.
Picture me prone, a small center point-
One copper dot in the white Minnesota winter.
Picture my mother drying her hands
Placing the compass and spinning
Arcs and intersecting curves,
Woodland flowers growing
Into many-petaled mandalas
Into limitlessness: a universe
Of circles, of symmetry- sun,
Stars, blooms, and orange-hued fruits,
The berry, squash, ripe tomato wonder
of belonging.
My own spirograph bursts
Rush forth ornate like paisley, like fireworks
Against dark summer sky. Spokes and wheels
And gears meshing-each pencil thrust
A tentative mark, a hopeful threading
Of the cogs of longing. Imagine my fingers
Holding tight to the friction,
Watch the intricate flourishes appear
On white paper- the tabula rasa
Transformed by oval,
Just another language
Another voice saying hello
To the spiraling bodies of self.
REWRITING YOUR LIFE
not just the past
that matters the most,
but those haunting scenes
that make anger and panic rise in your throat
at the domestic quarrels of strangers.
The same sort
that makes my pulse pound in my ears
to drown out that saccharine alcohol voice
of the women two booths away.
Erasing, replacing
the longings that arose from want
the causes
of your jacket fetish
the causes
of the bathtub in my parent's yard
the causes
of all old patterns stumbling on to renew themselves
of personal quirks
and other small tortures.
…
The little tug in our voices
we wash down with complimentary water
at public podiums and in banquet halls
it is the pull of the small store of joy
of a people born poor
studying in school to be ashamed
it is the shiny marbles
our children shot across muddy school yards
and then washed and lined neatly to dry
it is fresh winter snow served with cream and sugar
nickel tent movies
and hurrah for the fourth of july!
It is your memories too now
that raise the flesh on my arms and legs.
And perhaps in time we can write across
that other life with this one,
but never enough to obscure it
just enough to make a new pattern
a new design
pitifully inadequate perhaps
for all that has happened -
but beautiful as only loved pain can be.
And so I write across your life that way
with mine
I write across your life with love
that comes from my own pain
and then, of course,
I write your face across my pain.
ALLISON ADELLE HEDGE COKE
Huron, Metis, French Canadian, Luso, and Mixed Southeastern Native
AMERICA, I SING YOU BACK
America, I sing back. Sing back what sung you in.
Sing back the moment you cherished breath.
Sing you home into yourself and back to reason.
Before America began to sing, I sung her to sleep,
held her cradleboard, wept her into day.
My song gave her creation, prepared her delivery,
held her severed cord beautifully beaded.
My song helped her stand, held her hand for first steps,
nourished her very being, fed her, placed her three sisters strong.
My song comforted her as she battled my reason
broke my long-held footing sure, as any child might do.
As she pushed herself away, forced me to remove myself,
as I cried this country, my song grew roses in each tear’s fall.
My blood-veined rivers, painted pipestone quarries
circled canyons, while she made herself maiden fine.
But here I am, here I am, here I remain high on each and every peak,
carefully rumbling her great underbelly, prepared to pour forth singing—
and sing again I will, as I have always done.
Never silenced unless in the company of strangers, singing
the stoic face, polite repose, polite while dancing deep inside, polite
Mother of her world. Sister of myself.
When my song sings aloud again. When I call her back to cradle.
Call her to peer into waters, to behold herself in dark and light,
day and night, call her to sing along, call her to mature, to envision—
then, she will quake herself over. My song will make it so.
When she grows far past her self-considered purpose,
I will sing her back, sing her back. I will sing. Oh I will—I do.
America, I sing back. Sing back what sung you in.
STREAMING
a dream echoing light/dark, some of us flew then
Albireo dreaming— streaming
Ya, yan, e, tih
kettle
Yah, re, sah Ya, yan quagh, ke
beans, cornfield
Yat, o, regh, shas ta
I am hungry
…
In a dream where time poses as dust,
Where echo-wrinkles reverberate
Consciousness signals against
Savannahs-
Sandhills overhead, their chortling
Carries snow geese back to councils.
In this streaming, seasons shift
Far past distressed unravelings,
Where grasses seed sparseness
Commingle alongside wrinkle, weavings, time,
Signaling light shocks spreading fingerlike
Across blue/white world.
…
Here in the cylindrical and spherical,
In the curvilinear space
Its echo-wrinkle reverberations,
Discernments, definite dissonance;
Here, intuition/memory intersect,
Prophesy source into beingness,
We in certain presence- being- at all times.
DEBORAH MIRANDA
Esselen/Chumash [Ohlone-Costanoan Esselen]
A POEM
We here
Are composed of earth
Valleys and rivulets
Vines loaded with grapes
An abundance of roses
We Indians on this coast
Carry on
Very civil old and young
…
We treat with confidence and
Good-will
All lives
Always care for
The whole
Multitude
A kind of wild
god
Song of II’UR (one of the Kumeyaay words for Juniper)
TEARS OF THE SUN
The river is full of mica.
When we swim, our bodies
Shimmer, wrapped in constellations
Of stars. Our forearms swirl
And sparkle like the Milky Way,
Legs glint with galaxies.
Our hands glitter gold as if dipped
In stardust. In July’s white-hot
Sun, sparks of the cosmos
Bathe us in the dust of all
That has come before us.
See how we are embers
Waiting to blaze and ignite.
See how the river dresses us-
Lost, stolen, dispossessed, broken-
In living bones of granite,
In the light of our Ancestors.
December 11, 2021
I can't say enough good things about this anthology of indigenous American poetry, published by Tupelo Press. I've been traveling through it slowly since it came out in 2019. Most of these poets were completely new to me and added new ideas and new voices for me to investigate further.
The format, which paired a short introductory biography with each writer's poetry, and then added an afterward written by the poet, often containing one of their favorite poems by another author, gave a rich context to each profile. Some of the afterwards were as magical as the poems themselves.
Much of the struggle here has to do with identity. Few of these writers descend from pure tribal lines. Do your genetics determine who you are? How do you decide what is home, where to locate your community? It's a question most Americans must confront every day. Very few of us can claim purity of ancestry. Who and what determines where we belong? Is biology the only and most important determinant of who you are?
It's crucial that native cultures be preserved and passed on--all native people have insights into how to live in and with the environments they inhabited for so many years.
For indigenous peoples in the Americas, there are additional layers of conquest, genocide, broken promises, and continued suppression and neglect. I was particularly heartened at the younger poets in this anthology, who refuse to be victims, who take their place as equals, unworried about whether the powers that be find them deserving. And who seem eager to share who they are with whoever is willing to listen.
The format, which paired a short introductory biography with each writer's poetry, and then added an afterward written by the poet, often containing one of their favorite poems by another author, gave a rich context to each profile. Some of the afterwards were as magical as the poems themselves.
Much of the struggle here has to do with identity. Few of these writers descend from pure tribal lines. Do your genetics determine who you are? How do you decide what is home, where to locate your community? It's a question most Americans must confront every day. Very few of us can claim purity of ancestry. Who and what determines where we belong? Is biology the only and most important determinant of who you are?
It's crucial that native cultures be preserved and passed on--all native people have insights into how to live in and with the environments they inhabited for so many years.
For indigenous peoples in the Americas, there are additional layers of conquest, genocide, broken promises, and continued suppression and neglect. I was particularly heartened at the younger poets in this anthology, who refuse to be victims, who take their place as equals, unworried about whether the powers that be find them deserving. And who seem eager to share who they are with whoever is willing to listen.
July 20, 2019
Another excellent text that needs to be in classrooms of higher education.
December 24, 2022
For Read Harder Challenge #5, Read an anthology featuring diverse voices. An excellent collection, one that now has tons of post-its marking the pages I want to return to.
Want to read
April 3, 2025811.6 Nat
August 31, 2021
This is a great anthology to have in the bookshelf for reference, to browse, and to discover and enjoy many great voices, all in one place. I'm very grateful that it exists and that it is in my bookshelf. It is also worthwhile to read cover to cover, which I did. The essays (sometimes excerpts from earlier publications), furnished by each poet to go with their poems and to talk about influences on their work, are my favorite feature. I'm not so sure how much the brief intros to each poet contribute. I didn't find them very informative. They basically amount to mini-praises, and how many ways are there to do that. As an aside, and one I'm sorry about, I've rarely seen a book with so many typos, and I wish it had been proofread with more care and respect for the texts. All in all, though, as I said, a great addition to any poetry shelf anywhere, including mine.
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