by Joy Harjo
(told in St. Lawrence Island Yup´ik)
IVAGHULLUK ILAGAATA
Ighivganghani, eghqwaaghem elagaatangi taakut atughaqiit. Ilagaghaqut angyalget taakut. Ivaghullugmeng atelget.
Elngaatall, repall tusaqnapangunatengllu. Nangllegsim angtalanganeng, wata eghqwaalleghmi tawani nangllegnaghsaapiglluteng ilaganeghmeggni iglateng qughaghteghllaglukii piiqegkangit. Nangllegsim angtalanganeng Kiyaghneghmun.
Uuknaa-aa-aanguu-uuq.
Saamnaa-aa-aanguu-uuq,
Taglalghii-ii-ii saa-aamnaa.
Ketangaa-aan aghveghaa-aa saa-aamnaa-aa
Aghvelegglaguu-uu-lii.
Ellngalluu-uu-uu.
Qagimaa iluganii-ii-ii.
Uuknaa-aa-aanguu-uuq.
Saamnaa-aa-aanguuq,
Taglalghii-ii-ii saa-aamnaa.
Ketangaa-aa-aan ayveghaa-aa saa-aamna.
Aghvelegllaaguluu-uu-lii
Elngaa-aa-aalluu-uungu-uuq
Qagimaa iluganii-ii-ii.
Uuknaa-aa-aanguu-uuq.
Saamnaa-aa-aanguu-uuq
Taglalghii-ii-ii saa-aamnaa.
Ketangaa-aan maklagaa-aa-aanguuq.
Aghvelegllaguulii-ii-iingii.
Ellngalluu-uu-uu.
Qagimaa iluganii-ii-ii-ngiy.
Before the whaling season, the boat captain would sing ceremonial songs in the evening. The ceremony of singing was called ivaghulluk.
The boat captain would sing these songs in such a low reverent voice that you could hardly make out the words. Especially before the whaling season began, the songs of petition were sung to God in a prayerful pleading voice.
The time is almost here.
The season of the deep blue sea . . .
Bringing good things from the deep blue sea.
Whale of distant ocean . . .
May there be a whale.
May it indeed come . . .
Within the waves.
The time is almost here.
The season of the deep blue sea . . .
Bringing good things from the deep blue sea.
Walrus of distant ocean . . .
May there be a whale.
May it indeed come . . .
Within the waves.
The time is almost here.
The season of the deep blue sea . . .
Bringing good things from the deep blue sea.
Bearded seal of distant ocean . . .
May there be a whale.
May it indeed come . . .
Within the waves.
MARY TALLMOUNTAIN (1918–1994), Koyukon, was a poet, stenographer, and educator. Born in Nulato, Alaska, along the Yukon River, she was adopted and relocated to Oregon. In her later years she moved to San Francisco, started her own stenography business, and began to write poetry. She is the author of The Light on the Tent Wall (1990), A Quick Brush of Wings (1991), and the posthumous collection Listen to the Night (1995). While living in San Francisco she founded the Tenderloin Women Writers Workshop, which supported women’s literary expression.
Good Grease
The hunters went out with guns
at dawn.
We had no meat in the village,
no food for the tribe and the dogs.
No caribou in the caches.
All day we waited.
At last!
As darkness hung at the river
we children saw them far away.
Yes, they were carrying caribou!
We jumped and shouted!
By the fires that night
we feasted.
The Old Ones chuckled,
sucking and smacking,
sopping the juices with sourdough bread.
The grease would warm us
when hungry winter howled.
Grease was beautiful—
oozing,
dripping and running down our chins,
brown hands shining with grease.
We talk of it
when we see each other
far from home.
Remember the marrow
sweet in the bones?
We grabbed for them like candy.
Good.
Gooooood.
Good grease.
There Is No Word for Goodbye
Sokoya, I said, looking through
the net of wrinkles into
wise black pools
of her eyes.
What do you say in Athabascan
when you leave each other?
What is the word
for goodbye?
A shade of feeling rippled
the wind-tanned skin.
Ah, nothing, she said,
watching the river flash.
She looked at me close.
We just say, Tłaa. That means,
See you.
We never leave each other.
When does your mouth
say goodbye to your heart?
She touched me light
as a bluebell.
You forget when you leave us;
you’re so small then.
We don’t use that word.
We always think you’re coming back,
but if you don’t,
we’ll see you some place else.
You understand.
There is no word for goodbye.
JOHN DOMINIS HOLT (1919–1993), Kanaka Maoli, was a poet, short-fiction writer, novelist, publisher, and cultural historian whose collective works contributed to the rise of the second Hawaiian renaissance movement in the 1960s and ’70s. He received several honors and accolades, including recognition as a Living Treasure of Hawai‘i in 1979 and the Hawai‘i Award for Literature in 1985. Additionally, Holt started Topgallant Press (Ku Paʻa Press), which published numerous books by authors in Hawaiʻi.
Ka ‘Ili Pau
Give me something from
The towering heights
Of blackened magma
Not a token thing
Something of spirit, mind or flesh, something of bone
The undulating form of
Mauna Loa
Even lacking cold and mists
Or the dark of night, it
Is always forbidding: there is a love
That grows between us.
Ka ‘ili pau, you are a crazed ʻanā-ʻanā
With a shaman’s tangled hair,
Reddened eyes, and his
Laho—maloʻo.
He falls in love with his ʻumeke and its
Death giving objects.
These gifts form the times of confusion
Come from the mountain heights
Wild skies, deep valley cliffs and
Darkened caves
Where soft air creeps into darkness
Gently touching bones and
The old canoe’s prow
Inside the stunning skeletal remains
Of moe puʻu
My companions in death
My own skeleton stretches long
Across a ledge
Above the ancient remains
Of boat and bones
Give me your secrets locked
In lava crust
Give me your muscled power
Melted now to air and dust
Give me your whitened bones
Left to sleep
These many decades now as
The pua of your semen have multiplied down through
The centuries.
Sleep ali‘i nui and your
Companions
Sleep in your magic silence in
Your love wrapped in the total
Embrace of death
You have given us our place
Your seed proliferates
We are here
And we sing and laugh and love
And give your island home
A touch (here and there) of
Love and magic, these
Live in you makua aliʻi sleep on.
In your silence there is strength
&nbs
p; Accruing for the kamaliʻi.
NORA MARKS DAUENHAUER (1927–2017), Tlingit, was a poet, fiction writer, and Tlingit language scholar. Born in Juneau, Alaska, to a fisherman and a beader, Dauenhauer researched Tlingit language and translated works of Tlingit culture at the Alaska Native Language Center. She received numerous honors and awards, including a National Endowment for the Humanities grant, a Humanist of the Year award, and an American Book Award. She also served as Alaska’s Poet Laureate from 2012 to 2014.
In Memory of Jeff David
(Regional Basketball “All-American Hall of Famer”)
Even your name
proclaims it.
In Tlingit: S’ukkées,
“Wolf Rib, Like a Bracelet,
Like a Hoop.”
Scoring hook shots,
as center,
shooting from the key,
your body motion
forming a hoop
wolfing up the points.
Letter to Nanao Sakaki
I dance with
dancing cranes
(lilies of the valley),
transplanting them
under a tree until
next summer
when there will be
more dancers.
How to make good baked salmon from the river
for Simon Ortiz
and for all our friends and relatives
who love it
It’s best made in dry-fish camp on a beach by a
fish stream on sticks over an open fire, or during
fishing or during cannery season.
In this case, we’ll make it in the city, baked in
an electric oven on a black fry pan.
INGREDIENTS
Barbecue sticks of alder wood.
In this case the oven will do.
Salmon: River salmon, current super market cost
$4.99 a pound.
In this case, salmon poached from river.
Seal oil or olachen oil.
In this case, butter or Wesson oil, if available.
DIRECTIONS
To butcher, split head up the jaw. Cut through,
remove gills. Split from throat down the belly.
Gut, but make sure you toss all to the seagulls and
the ravens, because they’re your kin, and make sure
you speak to them while you’re feeding them.
Then split down along the back bone and through
the skin. Enjoy how nice it looks when it’s split.
Push stake through flesh and skin like pushing
a needle through cloth, so that it hangs on stakes
while cooking over fire made from alder wood.
Then sit around and watch the slime on the salmon
begin to dry out. Notice how red the flesh is,
and how silvery the skin looks. Watch and listen
to the grease crackle, and smell its delicious
aroma drifting around on a breeze.
Mash some fresh berries to go along for dessert.
Pour seal oil in with a little water. Set aside.
In this case, put the poached salmon in a fry pan.
Smell how good it smells while it’s cooking,
because it’s soooooooo important.
Cut up an onion. Put in a small dish. Notice how
nice this smells too, and how good it will taste.
Cook a pot of rice to go along with salmon. Find
some soy sauce to put on rice, maybe borrow some.
In this case, think about how nice the berries would
have been after the salmon, but open a can of fruit
cocktail instead.
Then go out by the cool stream and get some skunk
cabbage, because it’s biodegradable, to serve the
salmon from. Before you take back the skunk cabbage,
you can make a cup out of one to drink from the
cool stream.
In this case, plastic forks, paper plates and cups will do, and
drink cool water from the faucet.
TO SERVE
After smelling smoke and fish and watching the
cooking, smelling the skunk cabbage and the berries
mixed with seal oil, when the salmon is done, put
salmon on stakes on the skunk cabbage and pour
some seal oil over it and watch the oil run into
the nice cooked flakey flesh which has now turned
pink.
Shoo mosquitoes off the salmon, and shoo the ravens
away, but don’t insult them, because mosquitoes
are known to be the ashes of the cannibal giant,
and Raven is known to take off with just about
anything.
In this case, dish out on paper plates from fry pan.
Serve to all relatives and friends you have invited
to the barbecue and those who love it.
And think how good it is that we have good spirits
that still bring salmon and oil.
TO EAT
Everyone knows that you can eat just about every
part of the salmon, so I don’t have to tell you
that you start from the head, because it’s everyone’s
favorite. You take it apart, bone by bone, but make
sure you don’t miss the eyes, the cheeks, the nose,
and the very best part—the jawbone.
You start on the mandible with a glottalized
alveolar fricative action as expressed in the Tlingit
verb als’oss’.
Chew on the tasty, crispy skins before you start
on the bones. Eeeeeeeeeeeee!!!! How delicious.
Then you start on the body by sucking on the fins
with the same action. Include the crispy skins, then
the meat with grease dripping all over it.
Have some cool water from the stream with the salmon.
In this case, water from the faucet will do.
Enjoy how the water tastes sweeter with salmon.
When done, toss the bones to the ravens and
seagulls and mosquitoes, but don’t throw them in
the salmon stream because the salmon have spirits
and don’t like to see the remains of their kin
among them in the stream.
In this case, put bones in plastic bag to put
in dumpster.
Now settle back to a story telling session, while
someone feeds the fire.
In this case, small talk and jokes with friends
will do while you drink beer. If you shouldn’t
drink beer, tea or coffee will do nicely.
Gunalchéesh for coming to my barbecue.
LEIALOHA PERKINS (1930–2018), Kanaka Maoli, was a poet, publisher, fiction writer, and educator. She earned her PhD in folklore and folklife from the University of Pennsylvania. In 1998 she received the Hawai‘i Award for Literature. In addition to writing poetry, Perkins founded Kamalu‘uluolele Publishers, which specialized in Pacific Islands subjects as they relate to both East and West, and taught at universities in Hawaiʻi and Tonga.
Plantation Non-Song
Those years of lung-filling dust in Lahaina
of heat and humidity that induced
men and animals to lie down mid-afternoons
and sleep–between the mill’s lunch shift whistles–
were not great, but mediocre for most things
and superlative for doing or not doing anything
useful, ugly, or good. Just for staying out of trouble.
There was time and space for a child to grow up in
playing between scrabbly hibiscus bushes,
and hopping over rutty roads
that smelled of five-day-old urine, all on one side
of the canefield tracks, ground once blanketed
with warrior dead and sorcerer’s bones.
At the shore, the white newcome
rs lived
crossing themselves at sunrise and sunset
in a paradise “discovered,” jubilating
as Captain Cook who also had found the unfound natives
and their unfound shore naked and ready for instant use.
Mill Camp’s
beginnings are beginnings
one may grow to respect if not honor
because they are a man’s beginnings.
But let’s not make sentiment
the coin for the cheap treatment
some got–and others enjoyed handing out.
Let’s call the fair, fair.
What may have been good, good enough
because it was there,
like space waiting for time to fill it up
(while we were looking elsewhere);
nevertheless, plantation worlds
enjoyed their own tenors:
ghettos of mind, slums of the heart.
VINCE WANNASSAY (1936–2017), Umatilla, was a poet, writer, artist, and community worker. After some years on skid row he began writing and published in many anthologies, including Dancing on the Rim of the World: An Anthology of Contemporary Northwest Native American Writing (1990). He mentored many people in the Native community in the Portland, Oregon, area.
Forgotten Coyote Stories
A LONG TIME AGO
WHEN I WAS A KID
I LIVED WITH MY
UNCLE AND AUNT
MY UNCLE RODE WITH
JOSEPH
WHEN HE WAS A KID . . .
I MEAN MY UNCLE NOT JOSEPH
UNCLE USE TO TELL US KIDS
COYOTE STORIES
SOME WERE FUNNY, SOME WEREN’T
MY MOTHER TOOK US, FROM UNCLE & AUNT
SHE PUT US IN A CATHOLIC BOARDING SCHOOL.
AT SCHOOL I TOLD SOME OF THE
COYOTE STORIES.
THE SISTERS SAID “DON’T BELIEVE
THOSE STORIES”. .
BUT BELIEVE US. . . . .
ABOUT A GUY
WHO WAVES A STICK . . . AND THE SEA OPENS
****
WALKS ON WATER
****