by Joy Harjo
flicker, signaling this.
With outstretched wings he tests the sutures.
Even he is subject to physical wounds and human
tragedy, he tells us.
The eyes of the Bear-King radiate through
the thick, falling snow. He meditates on the loss
of my younger brother—and by custom
suppresses his emotions.
One Chip of Human Bone
one chip of human bone
it is almost fitting
to die on the railroad tracks.
i can easily understand
how they felt on their long staggered walks back
grinning to the stars.
there is something about
trains, drinking, and
being an indian with nothing to lose.
MARCIE RENDON (1952–), Anishinaabe, an enrolled member of the White Earth Nation, is a poet, playwright, and community activist. Rendon’s work includes two novels, most recently Girl Gone Missing (2019), as well as four children’s nonfiction books. She received the Loft Literary Center’s 2017 Spoken Word Immersion Fellowship. She is a producer and creative director at the Raving Native Theater in Minnesota.
What’s an Indian Woman to Do?
what’s an indian woman to do
when the white girls act more indian
than the indian women do?
my tongue trips over takonsala
mumbles around the word mitakuye oyasin
my ojibwe’s been corrected
by a blond U of M undergraduate
what’s an indian woman to do?
much to my ex-husband’s dismay
i never learned the humble,
spiritual,
Native woman stance
legs tight, arms close, head bowed
three paces behind
my mother worked and fought with men
strode across fields
100-pound potato sacks on shoulders broad as any man
the most traditional thing
my grandfather taught me
was to put jeebik on the cue stick
to win a game of pool
so i never learned the finer
indian arts
so many white women have become adept at
sometimes I go to pow-wows
see them selling wares
somehow the little crystals
tied on leather pouches
never pull my indian heart
huh, what’s an indian woman to do?
i remember Kathy She Who Sees the Spirit Lights
when she was still
Katrina Olson from Mankato, Minnesota
and Raven Woman?
damn, i swear i knew her
when she was a jewish girl
over in st. paul
as my hair grays
theirs gets darker
month by month
their reservation accents
thicker
year by year
used to be
reincarnation happened
only to the dead
hmmm?!?!?
what’s an indian woman to do
when the white girls act more indian
than the indians do???
ALEX JACOBS (KARONIAKTAHKE) (1953–), Akwesasne Mohawk, studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe and earned a BFA in sculpture and creative writing from the Kansas City Art Institute, where he discovered his interest in collage and mixed-media work. In addition to being a writer, Jacobs is a spoken-word artist, radio deejay, and musician. He has worked at Akwesasne Notes and as an ironworker, and he has taught poetry and art in various settings including at the Santa Fe Indian School.
Indian Machismo or Skin to Skin
this is the Blue Jean Nation speakin’, bro
and these are the Red Man’s Blues, sista
hey ya hey ya hey, what can I say
you could say, cuz, we missed the boat
yeah, the Mayflower, or was it the Nonie, Pinto & Santo Domingo,
i dunno, i wasn’t in school that day
but, yo! We ain’t no alcatraz, no aim, no wounded knee
we don’t vote, but who votes anyway
you kick out the blood-sucking scum
they just come back wiser, richer, hard-core thieves
you can’t kick out what you come to depend on?!
They need us weak and weak we get
so what? So what?! So what!
You do your part, you get diddly squat
how many meetings, how many cops, how many knocks
in the dark, leave me alone, just do your thang!
Hey, hey, hey, we missed:
Floyd Westerman, Buffy Ste. Marie, Russell Means
Dennis Banks, we even missed Iron Eyes Cody and
this tear’s for you, we missed national indian day
we missed the Trail of Broken Treaties, Plymouth Rock,
the Longest Walk, the fish-ins, the sit-ins, the marches
NO, we don’t know tom petty, the allmans, the grateful dead,
we don’t know jackson browne, bruce cockburn, neil young,
NO, we don’t know fritz scholder or jamake highwater
& MAN, WE DON’T WANT TO
we missed: FORT LAWTON, PIT RIVER, FRANKS LANDING,
we missed: SCOTTSDALE, CUSTER, PINE RIDGE, ROSEBUD
we missed: CROW DOG’S PARADISE, THE FBI RAIDS,
we missed: GANIENKEH & AKWESASNE & MORE FBI RAIDS
THE MOHAWKS DREW A LINE IN THE DIRT & SAID TO THE NY
STATE TROOPERS: “CROSS THIS LINE AND WE WILL ATTICA YOU!”
TROOPERS BEATING BATONS ON THEIR RIOT SHIELDS
THEY WOULD NOT TAKE THAT LAST STEP
TO COLLECT THAT LAST EARTHLY PAYCHECK . . .
we missed them outlawing the Native American Church
we missed them tearing up 4 Corners, fencing Big Mountain
we missed the Vatican wanting to put up a telescope
called Columbus on an Apache Sacred Mountain . . .
we missed: RED & BARRIER & LUBICON LAKES, PARLIAMENT HILL,
we missed: JAMES BAY & OKA & THE TV NEWS
we missed all the new Redman movies
NO, we don’t know, brando, dylan, fonda, costner
but, bro, i say, not proud, not wise, just reality
& human-size, from the beat of the street & not a drum
We are the Skins that drink in the ditch
We are the Skins that fill the tanks, cells, jails, wards
We are the Skins that need that spare change, bottle, baggie
We are the Lou Reed Skins, the Funky Skins, the Cowboy Skins
We are the ghosts of Seattle, homeless walking urban spirits
We are the frozen dead of Bigfoot’s Band
WE ARE BURNING CORNFIELDS!
We are burned down boarding schools, trashed BIA toilets
government trailer trash, broken glass, broken treaties!
You mean you still believe in treaties?
You be bad, bad judges of character, like the faith of clowns
you trust too much, you believe in people’s smiles,
you mean you never seen ’em smile when they stab you in the
back, jack, Billy Jack, what show you been watchin’?
this ain’t no rerun! It’s reality! It’s goin’ on right now!
IT’S HAPPENED EVERY DAY FOR 500 YEARS!
But i bet you be there in your buckskins when politicos
celebrate Cristofo Mofo Colombo in 1992 & make him an
honorary Cherosiouxapapanavajibhawk too! Aaaaiiiieeee-yahhhh!
But don’t forget to invite us to your par-tee, boyz
we are the skins that fill the bingos, the bootleggers,
the afterhours clubs, we are the skins that speak the language
of currency: toyota, cadillac, colombian, sinsemillian, jim beam,
jack daniels, cuervo, honda, sushi, gilley’s hard rock cafe
,
santa mantra fe, coors, bud, it’s miller time, zenith, motorola,
sony, phony feathers, patent leather, kragers, headers, spoilers
VCR, VHS, CD, DAT, BFA, MFA, PHD, BIA, BMW, LSMFT
machined decks and state of the art funky crapola,
it’s all payola, make you feel like the Marlboro-man, aaay! S.A.!
Where we put this stuff, i don’t know, but it makes the rounds
thas fer shur, we can’t help what we ain’t got,
what we ain’t got, izzit what we lookin’ for?
I think we lookin’ for help, that a flash or what?
U can call me bad, bro, but you did it, too, pretty slick of you
to forget to add it to you res-u-may, compadre
we can pass the buck all night long, asking
“How much did you get for your soul?”
but this soul’s been punctured, splintered, folded & mutilated
sewn back together into a crazy quilt that catches the wind
it’s the only way this soul knows how to pray. I’m sending
signals, bro!, using my genuine, authentic, rubber slicker, neon
patch, imitation yellow tanned bodybag, the same bodybag that
will carry me home when the last round-up happens in some
bloody border bar. Say, bro, say, sista, can you help me read the
signs, i musta missed survival school that day . . .
BUT, WHEN THEY KILL, YOU, ACTIVE,
DO WE, PASSIVE, BECOME VICTIMS OR GHOSTS . . . OR SURVIVALISTS
DO WE EVEN KNOW HOW TO SURVIVE OUTSIDE OF A CITY
& WHY DOES IT ALWAYS COME DOWN TO
SURVIVAL & SURVIVORS . . . EXTINCTION OR SUBMISSION
but i tell you what, Indians makin’ babies will take over
this country, this continent, from the inside out . . .
& i’m not gonna be another sad indian story
passed around the table after midnight
DENISE SWEET (1953–), Anishinaabe–White Earth Nation, served as Wisconsin Poet Laureate for 2005–8. Her poetry collections include Palominos Near Tuba City (2018) and Songs for Discharming, which won both the 1998 Wisconsin Posner Award for Poetry and the Diane Decorah Memorial Poetry Award from the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas. She is a professor emerita at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay and has performed her work across Europe, Central America, and North America.
Song for Discharming
Hear the voice of my song—it is my voice
I speak to your naked heart.
—Chippewa Charming Song
Before this, I would not do or say what impulse
rushes in to say or do
what instinct burns within
I had learned to temper in my clever sick
while stars unlock at dawn, anonymous as the speed of light
my gray mornings began as nothing, freed of geography
and stripped of any source or consequence.
I was, as you may expect, a human parenthesis.
There is no simple way to say this,
but drift closer, Invisible One, swim within this stream
of catastrophic history. Yours? Mine?
No, you decide. And then
come here one more time so that I may numb like dark
and desperate, so that I may speak your name this final round
you might think an infinite black fog waits to envelope me
you might dream an endless flat of light
you might think I drink
at the very edge of you, cowering like passerine while
hawks hunt the open field of my tiny wars,
but, little by little, like centipedes that whirl and spin
and sink into scorching sands of Sonora
or like gulls at Moningwanekaning that rise and stir
and vanish into the heat lightning of August
I will call you down and bring you into that deathly coil
I will show you each step and stair
I will do nothing and yet it will come to you in this way
that sorcery that swallowed me will swallow you too
at your desired stanza and in a manner of your own making
While I shake the rattle of ferocity moments before sunrise
while I burn sage and sweetgrass, and you, my darling,
while I burn you like some ruined fetish and sing over you
over and over like an almighty voice from the skies
it is in that fragile light
that I will love you
it is in that awakening
I will love myself too
in this dry white drought about to end
in this ghostly city of remember.
You will know this, too
and never be able to say.
Mapping the Land
(for James Pipe Moustache)
Like the back of your hand, he said to me,
with one eye a glaucoma gray marble
the brim of his hat shading the good one
you’ll learn the land by feel, each place
a name from memory, each stone
a fingerprint, and the winds:
they have their houses of cedar
At our feet a five-pound coffee can
of spit and chew; the old man leans towards it
and with remarkable aim, deposits the
thin brown liquid without missing a
step I never thought much of the running,
the miles between home and
Tomah boarding school he has since
teased me about the relays
the long-distance marathons, the logic of
treadmills. Who could explain that to this old man?
The sport of running with no destination
no purpose, slogging like wild-eyed sundancers
foolish in the heat, snapping at gnats
and no-seeums, signifying sovereignty
step by step on two-lane highways
raising the dust in unincorporated redneck towns
fluorescent Nikes kicking up blacktop
ogitchiidaa carrying the eagle staff
like an Olympian torch.
SALLI M. KAWENNOTAKIE BENEDICT (1954–2011), Awkwesasne Mohawk, was a poet and an author and illustrator of children’s books. An early editor of Akwesasne Notes, she was an activist and the cultural historian for the St. Regis Tribe, involved in research and land claims, and publishing articles on Native culture. She worked in pottery, sculpture, and quilting. Benedict spent much of her time teaching children, and she headed the Aboriginal Rights and Research Office for the Mohawk Council of Awkwesasne.
Sweetgrass Is Around Her
A woman was sitting
on a rock.
I could see her
clearly,
even though
she was far away.
She was Teiohontasen,
my mother’s aunt.
She was a
basket maker.
When I was young,
my mother told me
that her name meant,
“Sweetgrass is all around her.”
I thought that it was a good name
for a basket maker.
She was in her eighties
then.
She was short like me,
and a bit stout.
She knew the land well;
and the plants,
and the medicines,
and the seasons.
She knew how to talk
to the Creator too;
and the thunderers,
and the rainmakers.
She had a big bundle of sweetgrass
at her side.
It was long, and green,
and shiny.
Her big straw hat
shaded
her round face.
It was very hot.
She pulled her mid-calf-length dress
down to h
er ankles,
over her rubber boots.
She brought her lunch
in a paper bag;
a canning jar of cold tea,
fried bread,
sliced meat,
and some butter,
wrapped in tin foil.
She placed them carefully
on the rock.
She reached
into the bag,
and pulled out a
can of soft drink.
I thought it strange.
She didn’t drink
soft drinks.
Then,
she reached for her
pocket knife.
Basket makers always
have a good knife.
It was in the pocket of
the full-length
canvas apron,
that was always
safety-pinned to her dress.
She made two sandwiches,
. . . looked around.
Saw me looking at her.
Her eyes sparkled,
she smiled.
She lifted up the soft drink,
and signaled me to come.
After we ate,
she stood up
on the rock
and looked out.
She smelled the air.
I knew that she
could smell the sweetgrass.
I never could.
She pointed to
very swampy land.
Mosquitos, I thought.
I was dressed poorly.
We didn’t talk much
but we could hear,
and listen to each other.
She never forced me
to speak Mohawk.
Mohawk with an
English accent
made her laugh.
She didn’t
want to hear
English though.
We would spend
all day
picking sweetgrass.
Sometimes
we would look for
medicines.
One time,
my mother asked her
what she thought
Heaven would be like.
She said
that there was sweetgrass everywhere
and people made
the most beautiful
baskets.
KIMBERLY M. BLAESER (1955–), Anishinaabe, poet, photographer, fiction writer, and scholar, is an enrolled member of the White Earth Nation and grew up on the White Earth reservation. She earned her MA and PhD at the University of Notre Dame. The author of four poetry collections, most recently Copper Yearning, Blaeser served as Wisconsin Poet Laureate for 2015–16. She is the editor of Traces in Blood, Bone, and Stone: Contemporary Ojibwe Poetry and her monograph Gerald Vizenor: Writing in the Oral Tradition was the first Native-authored book-length study of an Indigenous author. She is a professor at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and an MFA faculty member at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe.