by Joy Harjo
Once we were finished we sadly pounded on the drums.
Naa hetsėstseha naeveno’nȯhtse’anonėstse nemenestotȯtse
And now we are looking for songs that will
tsetao’seve’šeo’omėhoxovestavatse
help us as we travel on or maybe we can now be here and sleep restfully.
Naa mato heva hetseohe nȧhtanėšeeveovana’xaenaootseme. He’tohe naonėsaanėšekanomepėhevėhene’enahenone.
Even though we do not know this place so well.
LANCE HENSON (1944–), Southern Cheyenne, was born in Washington, DC in 1944, and raised by his great aunt and uncle on a farm in Oklahoma. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps in Vietnam, and he is a member of the Cheyenne Dog Soldier Society. He is an activist, having worked with the American Indian Movement, and has served eighteen years as an NGO member at the United Nations Working Group of Indigenous Populations. He has published several volumes of poetry and two plays.
Sitting Alone in Tulsa at 3 A.M.
round dance of day has gone
a siren’s scream splashes the blinds like ice
a fly sits frozen on a yellow plastic cup
the end tables huddle in pairs
sale at renbergs on ladies shoes
felt squares and soft knits at the mill outlet
whatever I have done today has done without me
the edges of the city and the pale moon reflect
in the same river
how easily we forget
Anniversary Poem for Cheyennes Who Died at Sand Creek
when we have come this long way
past cold grey fields
past the stone markers etched with the
names they left us
we will speak for the first time to the season
to the ponds
touching the dead grass
our voices the color of watching
SUZAN SHOWN HARJO (1945–), Southern Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee, served as Congressional liaison for Indian affairs in the administration of President Jimmy Carter and later served as executive director of the National Congress of American Indians. She is president of the Morning Star Institute and in 2014 received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States’ highest civilian honor.
The Song Called “White Antelope’s Chant”
White Antelope had a song
it was a Tsistsistas song
it was his song
because he sang it
Clouding Woman had a song
it was a Tsistsistas song
it was her song
because she sang it
Buffalo Walla had a song
it was a Tsistsistas song
it was her song
because she sang it
Bull Bear had a song
it was a Tsistsistas song
it was his song
because he sang it
The Song that sang itself
had a Tsistsistas sound
and a truth for all who heard it
at the hour of the end
The Song that sang itself
had no language
it was a heartbeat that thundered
through the canyons of time
The Song that sang itself
had no chorus
its voice was the Morning Star
and the rain at the edge of time
The Song that sang itself
had no time
knew no season
it sounded with the power of the end
The Song sang a Tsistsistas Man
in the prayers in the sun
in the sighs on the wind
in the power of the end
The Song sang a Tsistsistas Woman
in the offerings at dawn
in the sighs of the wind
in the power of the end
The Song sang a Tsistsistas Child
in the cries in the night
in the sighs in the wind
in the power of the end
The Song sang a Tsistsistas sound
in the peace before dark
in the sighs on the wind
in the power of the end
Only Mother Earth endures
sang the man
Only Mother Earth endures
sang the woman
Only Mother Earth endures
sang the child
Only Mother Earth endures
sang the song
Only Mother Earth endures
JOHN TRUDELL (1946–2015), Santee Dakota. In 1969, Trudell became the spokesperson for the United Indians of All Tribes’ nineteen-month takeover of Alcatraz, using his training in radio broadcasting to run Radio Free Alcatraz. After the occupation, Trudell joined the 1972 American Indian Movement (AIM) occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs office building in Washington, D.C.; he served as chairman of AIM from 1973 to 1979. In 1979, his pregnant wife, three children, and mother-in-law were all killed in a house fire on the Duck Valley Indian Reservation in Nevada. Only twelve hours earlier, he had been a part of a protest in Washington, D.C. Following the deaths of his family, Trudell stepped back from the front lines, turning to his writing and music. In 1986, Trudell released the album A.K.A. Grafitti Man with Kiowa guitarist Jesse Ed Davis. On its release, Bob Dylan called it “the album of the year.”
Diablo Canyon
Today I challenged the nukes
The soldiers of the state
Placed me in captivity
Or so they thought
They bound my wrists in their
Plastic handcuffs
Surrounding me with their
Plastic minds and faces
They ridiculed me
But I could see through
To the ridicule they brought
On themselves
They told me squat over there
By the trash
They left a soldier to guard me
I was the Vietcong
I was Crazy Horse
Little did they understand
Squatting down in the earth
They placed me with my power
My power to laugh
Laugh at their righteous wrong
Their sneers and their taunts
Gave me clarity
To see their powerlessness
It was in the way they dressed
And in the way they acted
They viewed me as an enemy
A threat to their rationalizations
I felt pity for them
Knowing they will never be free
I was their captive
But my heart was racing
Through the generations
The memories of eternity
It was beyond their reach
I would be brought to the
Internment camp
To share my time with allies
This time I almost wanted to believe you
When you spoke of peace and love and
Caring and duty and god and destiny
But somehow the death in your eyes and
Your bombs and your taxes and your
Greed and your face-life told me
This time I cannot afford to believe you
HENRY REAL BIRD (1948–), Crow, began writing in 1969 after an extended stay in a hospital. He raises bucking horses on Yellow Leggins Creek in Montana and still speaks Crow as his primary language. His collection Horse Tracks (2011) was named Poetry Book of the Year by the High Plains Book Awards. He was named Montana’s poet laureate in 2009.
Thought
“Thought is like a cloud
You can see through shadow to see nothing
But you can see shadow
When it touches something you know,
Like that cloud’s shadow
Touching the Wolf Teeth Mountains.
When the clouds touch the mountain’s top
Or where it is high
The wind is good
W
hen you’re among the clouds
Blurred ground among fog,
You are close to He Who First Did Everything,”
Said my Grandfather Owns Painted Horse.
We are but nomads asking for nothing
But the blessing upon our Mother Earth.
We are born as someone new
So then
We have to be taught
The good from the bad.
What is good, we want you to know.
What is good, we want you to use,
In the way that you are a person.
NILA NORTHSUN (1951–), Shoshone and Anishinaabe, was born in Shurz, Nevada. Her father, Adam Fortunate Eagle, was a Native activist and a prominent figure in the occupation of Alcatraz. She was raised in the Bay Area and attended California State University in Hayward and Humboldt, where she met her first husband, Kirk Robertson. Together, they collaborated on the literary magazine Scree. She completed her BA in art at the University of Montana-Missoula. She was awarded the Silver Pen Award from the University of Nevada Friends of the Library in 2000, and in 2004 she received ATAYAL’s Indigenous Heritage Award for Literature. In addition to her writing, she works as a grant writer for the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony.
99 THINGS TO DO BEFORE YOU DIE
cosmo mag came out with a list
of 99 things to do before you die
i had done 47 of them
or at least my version of them
like make love on the forest floor
spend a day in bed reading a good book
sleep under the stars
learn not to say yes when you mean no
but the other things
were things only rich people could do
and we certainly know
you don’t have to be rich before you die
things like
dive off a yacht in the aegean
buy a round-the-world air ticket
go to monaco for the grand prix
go to rio during carnival
sure would love to but
no maza-ska
money honey
so what’s a poor indian to do?
come up with a list that’s more
culturally relevant
so my list includes
go 49ing at crow fair
learn of 20 ways to prepare
commodity canned pork
fall in love with a white person
fall in love with an indian
eat ta-nee-ga with a sioux
learn to make good fry bread
be an extra in an indian movie
learn to speak your language
give your gramma a rose and a bundle
of sweet grass
watch a miwok deer dance
attend a hopi kachina dance
owl dance with a yakama
curl up in bed with a good indian novel
better yet
curl up in bed with a good indian novelist
ride bareback and leap over a small creek
make love in a tipi
count coup on an enemy
bathe not swim in a lake or river
wash your hair too and don’t forget your pits
stop drinking alcohol
tell skinwalker stories by campfire
almost die then appreciate your life
help somebody who has it worse than you
donate canned goods to a local food bank
sponsor a child for christmas
bet on a stick game
participate in a protest
learn a song to sing in a sweat
recycle
grow a garden
say something nice everyday to
your mate
say something nice everyday to
your children
chop wood for your grandpa
so there
a more attainable list
at this rate
i’m ready to die anytime
not much left undone
though cosmo’s
have an affair in paris while
discoing in red leather and sipping champagne
could find a place on my list.
cooking class
when you’ve starved most of your life
when commodities
the metallic instant potatoes
the hold your nose canned pork
the pineapple juice that never dies
the i didn’t soak them long enough pinto beans
the even the dog won’t eat this potted meat
potted as in should have been buried
in a potter’s field
when the wonderful commodity cheese
or terrible commodity cheese
that winos tuck ’neath their pits
and knock on your door
trying to sell it for $5
but taking $3
is all stored in the basement
or in closets
or left in the original boxes
lining hallways
of your hud house
cause there’s just no more room
you wonder
how can anyone starve
with so much food
but there are other starvations
like developing the taste for
lard sandwiches
or mustard and commodity cheese sandwiches
just cut the mold off the crusts of bread
and boil the tomato juice until it’s useable as
a spaghetti sauce
certainly don’t use the tomato sauce for
your Sunday morning bloody mary
to accompany your blueberry blintzes
or smoked salmon quiche
unless
you have a major change in attitude
cause the dried egg product can quiche
with the flour
and powdered milk
and if you’re a northwest coast tribe
salmon or sockeye or whatever fish
thing is possible
if not
some rich people pay good money
for the antelope or elk you can knock off
in your back yard
why bother with just goose liver pate
when you can have the whole damn canadian honker
blasted from its migratory path?
pheasants and quail are roadkill all the time
it’s just tenderized
it’s all in the attitude
and the presentation
parsley does wonders
for aesthetic contrast to
macaroni and cheese
again
and again
and again
JOE DALE TATE NEVAQUAYA (1954–), Yuchi and Comanche, is a poet and a visual artist. His poetry collection, Leaving Holes, had won the first Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas First Book Award for Poetry and was set to be published when the book’s small press shut down. Nearly twenty years later, the book was finally published as Leaving Holes and Selected New Writings and won the 2012 Oklahoma Book Award for Poetry. Nevaquaya spent his childhood years in Bristow and Oklahoma City. He lives now in Norman, Oklahoma, where he is a resource teacher at the alternative school.
Poem for Sonya Thunder Bull
The imprint of birds’ feet
scatter,
leaving the flecks
with which we muse the darkness.
It is only the wind
forgetting himself.
We remember.
LOUISE ERDRICH (1954–), Anishinaabe–Turtle Mountain Band, was born in Little Falls, Minnesota. She was the oldest of seven children, and two of her sisters are writers as well, including the poet Heid Erdrich. She earned her AB from Dartmouth College in 1976, a part of the first class of women admitted to the college. She earned her MA from Johns Hopkins University. Her first collection of poetry, Jacklight, was published in 1984, the same year that her novel Love Medicine won the Nat
ional Book Critics Circle Award. The author of fifteen novels, she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and a National Book Award for Fiction, among numerous other awards. In addition to her novels, children’s books, and short-story collections, she has published three critically acclaimed collections of poetry. She lives in Minnesota, where she owns Birchbark Books, an independent bookstore.
Jacklight
The same Chippewa word is used both for flirting and hunting
games, while another Chippewa word connotates both force in
intercourse and also killing a bear with one’s bare hands.
—R. W. Dunning
We have come to the edge of the woods,
out of brown grass where we slept, unseen,
out of knotted twigs, out of leaves creaked shut,
out of hiding.
At first the light wavered, glancing over us.
Then it clenched to a fist of light that pointed,
searched out, divided us.
Each took the beams like direct blows the heart answers.
Each of us moved forward alone.
We have come to the edge of the woods,
drawn out of ourselves by this night sun,
this battery of polarized acid
that outshines the moon.
We smell them behind it,
but they are faceless, invisible.
We smell the raw steel of their gun barrels,
mink oil on leather, their tongues of sour barley.
We smell their mothers buried chin-deep in wet dirt.
We smell their fathers with scoured knuckles,
teeth cracked from hot marrow.
We smell their sisters of crushed dogwood, bruised apples,
of fractured cups and concussions of burnt hooks.
We smell their breath steaming lightly behind
the jacklight. We smell the itch underneath the caked guts
on their clothes. We smell their minds like
silver hammers cocked back, held in readiness
for the first of us to step into the open.
We have come to the edge of the woods,
