When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through
Page 6
The radio doesn’t work
but the heater does.
The seats have seen more
asses than a proctologist.
I turn the key, it starts.
I push the brake, it stops.
What else is a car
supposed to do?
GAIL TREMBLAY (1945–), Onondaga and Mi’Kmaq, is a poet, mixed-media artist, and educator from Buffalo, New York. She earned her MFA in creative writing from the University of Oregon, and she has taught at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, for twenty-five years. The author of three books of poetry, Tremblay has also had her artwork displayed at museums around the country, including the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.
Indian Singing in 20th Century America
We wake; we wake the day,
the light rising in us like sun—
our breath a prayer brushing
against the feathers in our hands.
We stumble out into streets;
patterns of wires invented by strangers
are strung between eye and sky,
and we dance in two worlds,
inevitable as seasons in one,
exotic curiosities in the other
which rushes headlong down highways,
watches us from car windows, explains
us to its children in words
that no one could ever make
sense of. The image obscures
the vision, and we wonder
whether anyone will ever hear
our own names for the things
we do. Light dances in the body,
surrounds all living things—
even the stones sing
although their songs are infinitely
slower than the ones we learn
from trees. No human voice lasts
long enough to make such music sound.
Earth breath eddies between factories
and office buildings, caresses the surface
of our skin; we go to jobs, the boss
always watching the clock to see
that we’re on time. He tries to shut
out magic and hopes we’ll make
mistakes or disappear. We work
fast and steady and remember
each breath alters the composition
of the air. Change moves relentless,
the pattern unfolding despite their planning—
we’re always there—singing round dance
songs, remembering what supports
our life—impossible to ignore.
CHRYSTOS (1946–), Menominee, is a two-spirit, activist poet born in San Francisco. Her poetry collections, which focus on feminism, social justice, and Native rights, include Not Vanishing (1988), Dream On (1991), and Fire Power (1995). She received the Sappho Award of Distinction from the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice and a Lannan Literary Award for Poetry.
The Real Indian Leans Against
the pink neon lit window full of plaster of paris
& resin Indians in beadwork for days with fur trim
turkey feathers dyed to look like eagles
abalone & bones
The fake Indians, if mechanically activated
would look better at the Pow Wow than the real one in plain jeans
For Sale For Sale
with no price tag
One holds a bunch of Cuban rolled cigars
one has a solid red bonnet & bulging eyes ready for war
Another has a headdress from hell
with painted feathers no bird on earth
would be caught dead in
All around them are plastic inflatable
hot pink palm trees grinning skulls
shepherd beer steins chuckling checkbooks
black rhinestone cats
& a blonde blow up fuck me doll for horny men
who want a hole that will never talk back
There are certainly more fake Indians
than real ones but this is the u.s.a.
What else can you expect from the land of sell
your grandma sell our land sell your ass
You too could have a fake Indian in your parlor
who never talks back
Fly in the face of it
I want a plastic white man
I can blow up again & again
I want turkeys to keep their feathers
& the non-feathered variety to shut up
I want to bury these Indians dressed like cartoons
of our long dead
I want to live
somewhere
where nobody is sold
Ceremony for Completing a Poetry Reading
This is a give away poem
You’ve come gathering made a circle with me of the places
I’ve wandered I give you the first daffodil opening
from earth I’ve sown I give you warm loaves of bread baked
in soft mounds like breasts In this circle I pass each of you
a shell from our mother sea Hold it in your spirit Hear
the stories she’ll tell you I’ve wrapped your faces
around me a warm robe Let me give you ribbonwork leggings
dresses sewn with elk teeth moccasins woven with red
& sky blue porcupine quills
I give you blankets woven of flowers & roots Come closer
I have more to give this basket is very large
I’ve stitched it of your kind words
Here is a necklace of feathers & bones
a sacred meal of chokecherries
Take this mask of bark which keeps out the evil ones
This basket is only the beginning
There is something in my arms for all of you
I offer this memory of sunrise seen through ice crystals
Here an afternoon of looking into the sea from high rocks
Here a red-tailed hawk circles over our heads
One of her feathers drops for your hair
May I give you this round stone which holds an ancient spirit
This stone will soothe you
Within this basket is something you’ve been looking for
all of your life Come take it Take as much as you need
I give you seeds of a new way
I give you the moon shining on a fire of singing women
I give you the sound of our feet dancing
I give you the sound of our thoughts flying
I give you the sound of peace moving into our faces & sitting down
Come This is a give away poem
I cannot go home
until you have taken everything & the basket which held it
When my hands are empty
I will be full
ROBERTA HILL (ROBERTA HILL WHITEMAN) (1947–), Oneida, is a poet, fiction writer, essayist, and scholar. Her poetry collections include Star Quilt (1984, 2001), Her Fierce Resistance (1993), Philadelphia Flowers (1996), and Cicadas: New and Selected Poetry (2013). She edited an issue of About Place (2014); “Reading the Streets” (fiction) appeared in Narrative Witness: Indigenous People Australia–United States (2016). She is a professor of English and American Indian Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and is an affiliated faculty member of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.
Dream of Rebirth
We stand on the edge of wounds, hugging canned meat,
waiting for owls to come grind
nightsmell in our ears. Over fields,
darkness has been rumbling. Crows gather.
Our luxuries are hatred. Grief. Worn-out hands
carry the pale remains of forgotten murders.
If I could only lull or change this slow hunger,
this midnight swollen four hundred years.
Groping within us are cries yet unheard.
We are born with cobwebs in our mouths
bleeding with prophecies.
Yet within this int
erior, a spirit kindles
moonlight glittering deep into the sea.
These seeds take root in the hush
of dusk. Songs, a thin echo, heal the salted marsh,
and yield visions untrembling in our grip.
I dreamed an absolute silence birds had fled.
The sun, a meager hope, again was sacred.
We need to be purified by fury.
Once more eagles will restore our prayers.
We’ll forget the strangeness of your pity.
Some will anoint the graves with pollen.
Some of us may wake unashamed.
Some will rise that clear morning like the swallows.
In the Longhouse, Oneida Museum
House of five fires, you never raised me.
Those nights when the throat of the furnace
wheezed and rattled its regular death,
I wanted your wide door,
your mottled air of bark and working sunlight,
wanted your smokehole with its stars,
and your roof curving its singing mouth above me.
Here are the tiers once filled with sleepers,
and their low laughter measured harmony or strife.
Here I could wake amazed at winter,
my breath in the draft a chain of violets.
The house I left as a child now seems
a shell of sobs. Each year I dream it sinister
and dig in my heels to keep out the intruder
banging at the back door. My eyes burn
from cat urine under the basement stairs
and the hall reveals a nameless hunger,
as if without a history, I should always walk
the cluttered streets of this hapless continent.
Thinking it best I be wanderer,
I rode whatever river, ignoring every zigzag,
every spin. I’ve been a fragment, less than my name,
shaking in a solitary landscape,
like the last burnt leaf on an oak.
What autumn wind told me you’d be waiting?
House of five fires, they take you for a tomb,
but I know better. When desolation comes,
I’ll hide your ridgepole in my spine
and melt into crow call, reminding my children
that spiders near your door
joined all the reddening blades of grass
without oil, hasp or uranium.
These Rivers Remember
In these rivers, on these lakes
Bde-wa’-kan-ton-wan saw the sky.
North of here lies Bdo-te,
Center of the Earth. Through their songs,
the wind held on to visions.
We still help earth walk
her spiral way, feeling
the flow of rivers
and their memories of turning
and change.
Circle on circle supports us.
Beneath the tarmac and steel in St. Paul,
roots of the great wood are swelling
with an energy no one dare betray.
The white cliffs, I-mni-za ska,
know the length of Kangi Ci’stin-na’s tears.
He believed that words spoken
held truth and was driven into hunger.
Beneath the cliffs, fireflies flickered
through wide swaths of grass.
Oaks grew on savannahs, pleasant
in the summer winds where deer
remain unseen.
These rivers remember their ancient names,
Ha-ha Wa’-kpa, where people moved
in harmony thousands of years
before trade became more valuable than lives.
In their songs, the wind held
on to visions. Let’s drop our burdens
and rest. Let’s recognize our need
for awe. South of here, the rivers
meet and mingle. Bridges and roads,
highway signs, traffic ongoing.
Sit where there’s a center
and a drum, feel the confluence
of energies enter our hearts
so their burning begins to matter.
This is Maka co-ka-ya kin,
The Center of the Earth.
/// AUTHOR’S NOTE: The poem refers to the Dakota villages and way of life before white settlement, along with a reference to the Dakota–U.S. War of 1862. The Science Museum Park Project incorporated lines of poems written by poets from communities of color into the small park on Robert Street in St. Paul, Minnesota. Dr. Chris Mato Nunpa taught me the Dakota words. He graciously corrected my spellings and provided the following translations of the Dakota words. The word Bde-wa’-kan-ton-wan, the name of one of the fires of the Isanti (Santee) Dakota, means “Dwellers by Mystic Lake.” The Dakota word I-mni-za ska translates as “white cliffs” and is the Dakota name for St. Paul. Kangi Ci’stin-na’ means “Little Raven” and refers to the warrior and chief called “Little Crow,” who was the leader of the conflict. Ha-ha Wa-kpa has one possible translation as “River of the Falls” and refers to St. Anthony Falls. The Center of the Earth, Maka co-ka-ya kin or Macoke Cocaya Kin, is the confluence where the Minnesota River meets the Mississippi. Dr. Mato Nunpa explained that it can also be translated to mean “the Center of the Universe,” which fits with the notion that the Dakota came from the stars. The confluence is a sacred place which is also called Bdo-te, translated as “Mendota.”
LINDA LEGARDE GROVER (1950–), Anishinaabe, is an enrolled member of the Bois Forte Band of Ojibwe. A memoirist, fiction writer, and poet, she has received numerous awards, including the Flannery O’Connor Short Fiction Award and the Northeastern Minnesota Book Award for Poetry. She is a professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth, researching the effects of government Indian education policy on children and families.
Everything You Need to Know in
Life You’ll Learn in Boarding School
Speak English. Forget the language of your
grandparents. It is dead. Forget their teachings.
They are unGodly and ignorant. Cleanliness is
next to Godliness. Indians are not clean. Your
parents did not teach you proper hygiene. Stay
in line. This is a toothbrush. Hang it on the hook
next to the others. Do not allow the bristles to
touch. This spreads the disease that you bring
to school from your families. Make your bed with
mitered corners. A bed not properly made will be
torn apart. Start over. Remember and be grateful
that boarding school feeds and clothes you. Say
grace before meals. In English. Don’t cry. Crying
never solved anything. Write home once every
month. In English. Tell your parents that you are
doing very well. You’ll never amount to anything.
Make the most of your opportunities. You’ll never
amount to anything. Answer when the teacher
addresses you. In English. If your family insists on
and can provide transportation for you to visit home
in the summer, report to the matron’s office immediately
upon your return. You will be allowed into the
dormitory after you have been sanitized and de-loused.
Busy hands are happy hands. Keep yourself occupied.
You’ll never amount to anything. Books are our friends.
Reading is your key to the world. Forget the language
of your grandparents. It is dead. If you are heard speaking
it you will kneel on a navy bean for one hour. We will ask
if you have learned your lesson. You will answer. In English.
Spare the rod and spoil the child. We will not spare the rod.
We will cut your hair. We will shame you. We will lock you
in the basement. Learn from that. Improve yourself.
You�
�ll never amount to anything. Speak English.
RAY YOUNG BEAR (1950–), Meskwaki, was raised on the Meskwaki Tribal Settlement in Iowa, which was established in 1856 by his maternal great-great grandfather, a hereditary chief. Young Bear, who speaks and writes in both Meskwaki and English, began publishing poetry just after graduating from high school in 1969. Since then, he has published five collections of poetry including a collected works, Manifestation Wolverine (2015), and two works of fiction, most notably Black Eagle Child (1992). His awards include the 2016 American Book Award for Poetry and a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship. He has taught creative writing at numerous schools, including the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe.
John Whirlwind’s Doublebeat Songs, 1956
1.
Menwi—yakwatoni—beskonewiani.
Kyebakewina—maneniaki
ketekattiki
ebemanemateki
ebemanemateki
//
Good-smelling are these flowers.
As it turned out, they were milkweeds
dance-standing
as the wind passes by,
as the wind passes by.
2.
Inike—ekatai—waseyaki
netena—wasesi.
Memettine
beskattenetisono.
Memettine.
//
It is now almost daylight,
I said to the firefly.
For the last time
illuminate yourself.
For the last time.
Our Bird Aegis
An immature black eagle walks assuredly
across a prairie meadow. He pauses in mid-step
with one talon over the wet snow to turn
around and see.
Imprinted in the tall grass behind him
are the shadows of his tracks,
claws instead of talons, the kind
that belongs to a massive bear.
And he goes by that name:
Ma kwi so ta.
And so this aegis looms against the last
spring blizzard. We discover he’s concerned
and the white feathers of his spotted hat