by John Smelcer
So much for America being founded on religious principles
Template for Treaties Between the United States of America and Indian Tribes
{U.S. GPO Document 7342-1; 1868-Rev.}
By the authority pursuant to US §100-10, an Act of Congress, this is a Treaty between the United States of America and the {name of Indian tribe goes here}, a legally binding instrument, duly signed, and witnessed by Authorized Signatories of the United States and the aforementioned tribe, hereinafter referred to as “Sucker.”
In exchange for, and in consideration of, goods received {list of trinkets and trifles goes here}, the United States forthwith steals (hereafter referred to as “Purchases”) the following land {vague description of land goes here} ad valorem. Upon execution, Sucker agrees to forfeit all rights and claims to aforesaid Purchase in perpetuity and to indemnify and hold harmless the United States.
This agreement, entered into with good faith and in consideration that Indians are unable to read the contents herein with its jargon and non sequiturs, is subject to amendment or termination without notice or restitution by the second-signing party, for which the first-signing party forfeits all rights or provisions for future redress, retribution, or adjudication in a U.S. Court of Law.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF the Parties hereto have executed this Treaty on this ___ day of _______, anno domini 18___, in accordance to the privileges and God-given mandate of manifest destiny of these United States of America, quid pro quo, carpe diem, deus ex machina, caveat venditor, tempus fugit, mundus ex nihilo, magna cum laude, e pluribus unum, in excelsis deo, tu es perfututum.
[Authorized Signatories of Indian Tribe goes here]
[Authorized Signatories of United States of America goes here]
Duke Sky Thunder Tries a Jedi Mind Trick on Non-Native America
This isn’t the land you were looking for.
Move along.
If Charlie Brown Had Been Set on a Reservation
Lucy would work for the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
With a big leering grin she’d promise Charlie Brown
that she wouldn’t break the treaty this time
if only he’d sign on the bottom line.
“Don’t you trust me, Charlie Brown?” she’d taunt.
And wouldn’t you know that fool would fall for it every time.
Indian Superheroes
Chuck Norris and Billy Jack team up to fight injustice
on every reservation. Wearing boot-cut blue jeans,
faded denim jackets, and black hats with eagle feathers
tucked in the beaded bands they:
karate chop unemployment & poverty
sucker punch alcoholism & Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
side kick obesity & diabetes
head butt depression & suicide
knee groin lack of educational opportunity
Judo flip substandard housing & medical care
hammer fist disillusion
and put hopelessness in a headlock.
With a big grin Billy Jack says to bigotry,
“I’m gonna put this foot against that side of your head,”
while Chuck Norris waggles his little pinkie finger
and domestic violence unclenches its angry fists
and flees in fear.
The Last Fancy Dancer
Clarence Hoop Dancer cried red tears
the night the last song man died.
There will be no more songs
around the everlasting fire,
no more young men
to leap and dance like flames.
No more drums.
No more dancers.
He stood outside and cried
beneath the stars, the stars,
flowers of his country.
The Day the Words Died
On the day their language died
the people gathered unspoken words
in buckets and brown paper bags
in suitcases and cardboard boxes
tossed those ghosts of words
onto a great funeral pyre
and, one by one, flung themselves
into the dreadful fire.
What the Medicine Man Said
You are sick. . . . Inside.
Here, he said, touching my heart.
Their world has destroyed your spirit,
deprived you of meaning and pride,
tells you that you must want the wrong things,
things that only reinforce emptiness.
You need powerful medicine—
Indian medicine.
Sit down.
I will tell you a story.
Transfiguration Sunday
Easter Sunday, 1928. Father Slooko
stands before the Eucharist,
his face and hands raised to Heaven
as he recites The Last Supper.
“And after pouring wine into the cups of his disciples,
Jesus said,
Drink this, all of you, for this is the headwaters of my blood.
Then, he took out a salmon from a basket, held it up,
and said,
Eat this, all of you, for this is my body, which is given up unto you.”
After Mass, the congregation streams out the double doors,
wades into the river, turns into a school of salmon,
and swims out to sea.
Indians are like salmon—at one time or another
they all leave the village or reservation,
only to come home when it’s time to die.
The Ballad of Victor ComesAlong
Jesus was giving a sermon on the mount
when he noticed it was time for supper.
He looked around and saw he had no food
to feed the multitude.
Just then, Victor ComesAlong passed by
with a huge sack of fry bread slung over his shoulder.
Victor gave his sack of bread to Jesus, who blessed him.
From that day on everyone called it a miracle.
Literary Criticism
Catherine Has-Some-Books sat on a rock
talking to Johnny Looks-Too-White about Shakespeare.
“Hamlet must have been Indian,” she said,
“because everyone was out to get him.”
“Romeo must have been Indian,” he said,
“because white folks never let their daughters marry Indians.”
“Lear must have been Indian,” they nodded,
“because he lost everything in the end.”
They held each other as the sun abandoned the reservation,
certain that Shakespeare must have been Indian.
The Party Crashers
after a poem by Glen Simpson
Federal agents in black suits and black SUVs
crashed the Indian powwow.
The Man from the government said:
You gotta have a permit from the state
To assemble as Indians
To dance as Indians
To drum as Indians
To sing as Indians
To be Indians
Politically Incorrect
for Vincent Cache Smelcer (1978-2014)
My uncles and cousins sitting around a campfire.
A wolf howls on the dark mountain.
We all get up and dance and sing around the fire.
Huh ha! Hey! Hey! Huh ha!
Afterwards, one of my cousins says,
“Man, it’s great to be Native American!”
My uncle slaps him upside the head
and all us Indians laugh for a long time.
Hymn Singer
At grandmother’s funeral
I watch my Indian father
mouth words to “Amazing Grace”
Ts’in aen ne’k’eltaeni
Ts’in aen ne’k’eltaeni
and I am a stranger
&nb
sp; dressed in something black.
Indian Policy
based on a true story
Silas Carries-a-Dream wanted to go to college
so he went to McDonalds™ to ask for a scholarship
but they said they only gave money to
African Americans, Asian Americans,
Hispanic Americans, Anyone-else-but-you-Americans,
because Indians are all rich from casinos and bingo.
So Silas went home to his pick-up truck camper on blocks,
sat at his rickety table beneath a cupboard of one dusty can,
took stock of all his worldly possessions:
his Buick hubcap plate and bent fork
one thin red blanket
the leaky roof and broken window
old issues of Better Homes & Gardens
and his B&W television set
with its skeletal umbrella antennae
which only picked up westerns
when it didn’t rain.
He looked around, ashamed at his great display of wealth.
Indian Blues
Thomas Two Fists
whittled a guitar from a tree
that had fallen during a storm
and killed a shaman. He carved
the tuning pegs from the bones
of a white buffalo.
For strings,
he used the long gray hair of
old Indian mothers who had lost
their children and grandchildren
to alcohol and drunk driving.
For years,
Two Fists travelled from
reservation to reservation
and powwow to powwow
singing the blues.
Wherever he went,
Indians wrapped themselves in old blankets,
dreamed of forgotten homes and wept
dreamed of forgotten homes and wept.
Reservation Blues
All summer tourists pass
our village on the buckled highway
of this place seldom visited
where hearts slowly
do nothing but break,
where old Indian women and men
sell beadwork and dreamcatchers,
their pride so distant
it is carried only in memory
or forgotten in the blood,
and where I stand at the water’s edge,
my clenched fists wide as the river.
The Road to Chitina
“It is not good to be poor,
and there are no coins in the wind.”
—John Haines
From a weathered couch near the edge of a road
Indian men drink beer and count cars passing,
while inside a poor house of inconvenience
hungry children wait for their mother
sleeping off last night’s binge on the
uncomfortable seat of an old truck.
Some are born amid surroundings
where things are not as simple as they seem.
In this place of interminable despair,
even the wind, with its faint scent of poverty,
hurriedly blows through the stirring village
then out across the wide floodplain.
Cowboys & Indians #1
All the children in our neighborhood
played Cowboys and Indians.
Of course, Indians always lost,
their women and horses taken,
and their teepees and blankets burned.
It’s a good thing my Indian father
never saw me playing, always
dressed as a cowboy in a five-gallon hat
with two chrome six-guns and a silvery badge.
The Birthday Party
After the song was sung
candles extinguished
cake and ice cream consumed
and every present opened
the guests went outside to play
Cowboys & Indians
Indians hid behind trees and hedges
while cowboys rounded them up
and after shooting half
banished the rest to a condemned lot
on the poor side of town
Road Map
After dropping out of high school in the tenth grade
followed by years of unemployment, two failed marriages,
and falling off the wagon more times than he can remember,
Melvin Standing Still wonders where the hell he went wrong.
So he pulls out the tattered map of his life
carefully unhinges the torn and ragged folds
presses it flat on a table with both hands like an iron
leans over and traces its topography with a finger
frantically searching for the familiar X that says
You Are Here
Riversong
Tazlina Village, Alaska
I never want to leave this land.
All of my ancestors are buried here
listening to riversong
from picket-fenced graves
their wind-borne spirits
linking past and present:
sii xu’ane tsiye, Tezdlende Joe
my great-grandfather, Tazlina Joe,
sii tsucde ‘eł tsude, Ełdayudesnaa
my grandmother and her sister, Morrie Secondchief.
When I finally fall to pieces
this is where my pieces will fall.
An Indian Poet Apologizes for His Color
Johnny Looks-Too-White ponders which
ethnicity box to check on a job application
I’m one-quarter Indian,
three-fourths White—
three times more White than Indian.
Half a half-breed. Less than nothing.
I don’t fit in here or there.
Which parts of me are Indian?
Is it a molar, an earlobe, both thumbs,
my left testicle, the pinky toes?
Does it exist in that part of my heart
that only knows sorrow and loss,
or in my lungs, my duodenum,
every fourth blood cell?
I don’t know if I should drum and dance
and sing to the mountains,
or go shopping at The Gap
after an espresso at Starbucks.
Dreamcatcher
I used to have a dog named Jesus.
Every night before bedtime
he’d go out back
and bury my bad dreams
in shallow graves
like old soup bones.
After thirteen years,
he died and the dreams returned.
I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since.
The Abandoned First Draft
of the Preamble of the
United States Constitution
We the White People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfectly homogeneous Union, establish arbitrary justice, insure domestic tranquility for ourselves, provide for the common defense of White settlements and their economic interests, promote the general welfare by stealing all the land we see, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to all White People our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America subject to interpretation and excluding by law any persons of color.
This Is Just to Say
after a poem by William Carlos Williams
a note tacked to a tree in Indian country
we have
torn up the treaties
you signed
only yesterday
which you
paid for
in blood
We’re sorry
but we need
your land
so green, so green
Telling the News
“Although the Indians won the battle,
they subsequently lost th
e war. . . .”
—from a National Park Service pamphlet
At Little Bighorn
the spirit of a warrior
asks me if they won the war
and I answer,
“Yes, my friend.
You won. You won.”
Then the spirit of a soldier
asks me if they won the war
and I answer,
