When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through
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Several poets write specifically of queer or two-spirit Indigenous experiences. Julian Talamantez Brolaski’s poem addresses the presence of “twospirits at the/ winyan camp” at Standing Rock, North Dakota, while groaning over queer stereotypes and erasure of people of color at the Stonewall demonstrations in New York City in 1969, as portrayed in the 2015 film Stonewall; “and now people are treating standing rock like burning man,” they add, noting more erasures. Still, “I’m here to make a poem,” the author sings. Crisosto Apache’s poem “Ndéʼisdzán” (“two of me”) visually illustrates the intersection of two genders, the collision and creation of a third, “twins born in a water-suit.” Elements of earth, water, and air work together here, imagining a kind of spiritual DNA that is loving and fiercely beloved. In “Earthquake Weather,” Janice Gould says of her lover, “When September comes with its hot/ electric winds,/ I will think of you and know/ somewhere in the world/ the earth is breaking open.” The conflation of lover and earth could not be more profound—a connection that cannot be denied even in the midst of transformation.
Diné poets form an impressive core in this part of Indian Country; Tacey M. Atsitty, Rex Lee Jim, Luci Tapahonso, Laura Tohe, Esther G. Belin, Hershman R. John, Sherwin Bitsui, Orlando White, Bojan Louis, and Jake Skeets represent! The presence of Diné language in their poems is no less than a miracle, given the decimation of Indigenous languages in the Americas. Most readers of Jim’s “Saad” or Tapahonso’s “This is How They Were Placed for Us” won’t understand Diné; but some will, and oh, the pleasure and empowerment of seeing one’s language in a published book! As Sherwin Bitsui says of his poem from Flood Song, “the Navajo would understand it. But also the sound of it, . . . makes the sound of dripping water . . . splashing. The audience member who might not understand it literally can appreciate the sound of another language.” In the same way, the poets of western and southwestern parts of the United States remind non-Natives of the long historical presence of Indians in this place and send a vital message to Native and dominant language speakers alike: Indigenous languages are living, valid, valuable methods of creating literary works.
Like those isotopes stored in our bodies that preserve and carry traces of our birthlands, this writing carries something indelible: Each poem moves across the page, into the eyes and minds and hearts of readers. This is an art indistinguishable from living.
Nimasianexelpasaleki. My heart is happy.
ARSENIUS CHALECO (1889–1939), Yuma, was born in California on the Fort Yuma Indian Reservation. He attended the Phoenix Indian School in Arizona, where he trained as a blacksmith. After graduating, Chaleco farmed his own ten acres of land in Imperial County, California. In 1923, he served as interpreter for the Yuma Delegation, dictating a petition for the U.S. Secretary of the Interior at the convention of the Mission Indian Federation at Riverside, California. “The Indian Requiem” appears to be Chaleco’s only surviving poem, originally published in The Indian Teepee in 1924.
The Indian Requiem
In the loose sand is thrown
The warrior’s frame, now mouldering bone.
Ah, little thought the strong and brave
Who bore the lifeless chieftain forth,
Or the young wife who, weeping gave
Her first born, (years wasted now)
That through their graves would cut the plow.
Before the fields were sown and tilled,
Full to the brim our rivers plowed.
The melody of waters filled
The fresh and boundless wood.
Torrents dashed and rivulets played,
And fountains spouted in the shade.
These grateful sounds are heard no more.
The springs are silent in the sun,
And rivers, through their blackened shores,
With lessening currents run.
They waste us—ah, like April snow
In the warm noon, we shrink away,
And fast they follow as we go
Towards the setting day.
But I behold a fearful sign
To which the white man’s eyes are blind,
Their race may vanish hence like mine
And leave no trace behind,
Save ruins o’er the region spread,
And tall white stones above the dead.
And realms our tribes were crushed to get
May be our barren desert yet.
CARLOS MONTEZUMA (WASSAJA) (1866–1923), Yavapai-Apache, was a poet, physician, and activist. As a child, he was kidnapped and sold as a slave but was adopted by his “owner,” who provided a powerful education. Montezuma went on to become the first male American Indian doctor and a tireless advocate for Native issues. He worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs hospitals and fought for Indian rights. He spent the last years of his life publishing Wassaja, a journal advocating for Indian rights—especially for the territory and people of his homeland.
Indian Office
If the Indian Office is in existence for the best interest of the Indians, why does it not work FOR THE BEST INTEREST OF THE INDIANS?
Is working on the Indians as Indians, FOR THE BEST INTEREST OF THE INDIANS?
Keeping the Indians as Wards, is that FOR THE BEST INTEREST OF THE INDIANS?
Is caging the Indians on reservations FOR THE BEST INTEREST OF THE INDIANS?
Does opening the Indian lands for settlers work FOR THE BEST INTEREST OF THE INDIANS?
Are the Reimbursement Funds (Government Mortgage) FOR THE BEST INTEREST OF THE INDIANS?
Are dams built on reservations FOR THE BEST INTEREST OF THE INDIANS?
Giving five or ten acres of irrigation land to the Indian and taking the rest of his land away for land-grabbers, is that FOR THE BEST INTEREST OF THE INDIANS?
Is selling the Indians’ surplus (?) land FOR THE BEST INTEREST OF THE INDIANS?
To dispose of the Indians’ mineral lands, is that FOR THE BEST INTEREST OF THE INDIANS?
Selling the timber land of the Indians, is that FOR THE BEST INTEREST OF THE INDIANS?
To discriminate and keep back the Indian race from other races, is that FOR THE BEST INTEREST OF THE INDIANS?
Are Indian schools for the papooses FOR THE BEST INTEREST OF THE INDIANS?
Is keeping the Indians from opportunities FOR THE BEST INTEREST OF THE INDIANS?
Is doing everything for the Indians, without their consent, FOR THE BEST INTEREST OF THE INDIANS?
Keeping the Indians from freedom and citizenship, is that FOR THE BEST INTEREST OF THE INDIANS?
Is keeping six thousand employees in the Indian Service FOR THE BEST INTEREST OF THE INDIANS?
For you to have sole power over the Indians, is that FOR THE BEST INTEREST OF THE INDIANS?
Speak as we may, there is not one redeeming feature in the Indian Bureau FOR THE BEST INTEREST OF THE INDIANS. WASSAJA is emphatic in claiming the Indian Office has done all the harm that has come to the Indians; it is now doing great harm to the Indians, and it will suck the life-blood out of the Indians and that is not FOR THE BEST INTEREST OF THE INDIANS.
DON JESÚS YOILO’I (1904–1982), Yaqui, was born in Potám, a small Yaqui village outside Sonora, Mexico. He fought in the Yaqui Battalion during the Mexican Revolution; afterward, he worked in Arizona and Texas on railroads and in cotton fields. Around 1920 Yoilo’i returned home and collaborated with the elder deer singers in the Rio Yaqui area; he later mentored others in the way of the deer songs and pahko arts.
Yaqui Deer Song
Ka ne huni
into ne inia aniat
ne na ne welamsisimne
Kia ne ka ne huni
into ne inia aniat
ne na ne welamsisimne
Kia ne ka ne huni
into ne inia aniat
ne na ne welamsisimne
Kia ne ka ne huni
into ne inia aniat
ne na ne welamsisimne
Ayaman ne
seyewailo saniloata fayalikun
weyekai
Kia ne yevuku yolemta wikoli
ne yo yumatakai
Yevuku yolemta vaka hiuwai
ne yo yumatakai
Ka ne huni
into ne inia aniat
ne na ne welamsisimne
Never again I,
will I on this world,
I, around will I be walking.
Just I, never again I,
will I on this world,
I, around will I be walking.
Just I, never again I,
will I on this world,
I, around will I be walking.
Just I, never again I,
will I on this world,
I, around will I be walking.
Over there, I,
in an opening in the flowered-covered grove,
as I am walking.
Just I, Yevuku Yoleme’s bow
overpowered me in an enchanted way.
Yevuku Yoleme’s bamboo arrow
overpowered me in an enchanted way.
Never again I,
will I on this world,
I, around will I be walking.
Don Jesús Yoilo’i
Yoem Pueblo
May 9, 1981
FRANK LAPENA (1937–2019), Nomtipom Wintu, a poet, singer, essayist, visual artist, and performance artist, earned his BA degree at California State University Chico and his MA from Sacramento State University, where he served as professor of Art and Ethnic Studies and director of Native American Studies for more than thirty years. Working across the fields of art, from singing to writing to visual, dance, and performative art, LaPena was a founding member of the Maidu Dancers and Traditionalists, dedicated to the revival and preservation of these Native arts.
The Universe Sings
Spring days
and winter nights
have beautiful
flowers shining
they make themselves
visible
by whispering
in the color
of blue pollen
Their fragrances
are footprints
lightly traveling
on the milky way
Once I was given
a bracelet of
golden yellow flowers
on velvet darkness
Reenie said that
a mouse was painted
in the color of the sun
and that he danced for joy
on seeing flowers
blossom into stars
dancing across the universe
and singing,
singing, singing.
GEORGIANA VALOYCE-SANCHEZ (1939–), Chumash, Tohono O’odham, and Pima , was born and raised in California. She is an elder on the governing council of the Barbareño Chumash Council and a board member of the California Indian Storytelling Association. Her poems have been anthologized widely, including in The Sound of Rattles and Clappers, Through the Eye of the Deer, and Red Indian Road West. She recently retired from the American Indian Studies Program at California State University, Long Beach after twenty-eight years.
The Dolphin Walking Stick
He says
sure you look for your Spirit
symbol your totem
only it’s more a waiting
watching
for its coming
You listen
You listen for the way it
feels deep inside
Sometimes something comes
that feels almost
right
the way that swordfish
kept cropping up with
its long nose
but no
and so you wait
knowing it is getting
closer knowing
it is coming
And when that dolphin
jumped out of the water
its silver blue sides all shiny
and glistening with rainbows
against the white cloud sky
and the ocean so big
and deep
it went on
forever
I knew it had come
My father rests his hand upon
the dolphin’s back
the dolphin’s gaze serene
above the rainbow band
wrapped around the walking stick
He leans upon his brother friend
and walks across the room
As he walks
strings of seashells clack softly
as when ocean waves tumble
rocks and shells and
the gentle clacking song
follows each wave
as it pulls back into
the sea
The sea
So long ago
the Channel Islands filled
with Chumash People like
colonies of sea lions
along the shore so many
people
it was time for some to
make the move
across the ocean to
the mainland
Kakunupmawa the sun
the Great Mystery
according to men’s ideas
said don’t worry
I will make you a bridge
the rainbow
will be your bridge only
don’t look down
or you will fall
Have faith
So the chosen ones began
the long walk across
the rainbow
they kept their eyes straight
toward where the mainland was
and all around them
was the ocean sparkling
like a million scattered crystals
so blue-green and singing
lovely and cool
some looked down
and fell
into the
deep
to become
the dolphins
they too
the People
My father turns to look at me
Someone told me that story
long before I ever heard it
It’s those old ones
he says pointing up to the ceiling
as if it were sky
They sent the dolphin to me
I always loved the sea
PAULA GUNN ALLEN (1939–2008), Laguna, was born in Cubero, New Mexico. She received her PhD from the University of New Mexico and taught at several universities, retiring from the University of California, Los Angeles as a professor of English, Creative Writing, and American Indian Studies. Allen was the author of six poetry collections, including Life is a Fatal Disease, Skin and Bones, and America the Beautiful. She is widely known for her scholarship in Native literature and feminism.
Laguna Ladies Luncheon
on my fortieth birthday
Gramma says it’s so depressing—
all those Indian women,
their children never to be born
and they didn’t know
they’d been sterilized.
See, the docs didn’t want them
bothered, them being so poor and all,
at least that’s what is said.
Sorrow fills the curve of our breasts,
the hollows behind the bone.
Three closet Indians
my mother, my grandmother and I
who nobody sterilized. Our
children are grown.
We do not dare to weep
over coffee in this elegant place;
quiet, we hold their grief unborn.
My mother says it’s the same
as Nazi Germany.
A medical holocaust.
Now I’m officially
an old woman, she says,
I can tell them that.
SIMON ORTIZ (1941–), Acoma, was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and raised at Acoma Pueblo. As a young man, he served in the U.S. armed forces. Ortiz has more than two dozen volumes of
poetry, prose fiction, children’s literature, and nonfiction work translated and anthologized all over the world, including Out There Somewhere, Woven Stone, and From Sand Creek. Winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas, he is retired from his position as an endowed chair at Arizona State University.
My Father’s Song
Wanting to say things,
I miss my father tonight.
His voice, the slight catch,
the depth from his thin chest,
the tremble of emotion
in something he has just said
to his son, his song:
We planted corn one Spring at Acu—
we planted several times
but this one particular time
I remember the soft damp sand
in my hand.
My father had stopped at one point
to show me an overturned furrow;
the plowshare had unearthed
the burrow nest of a mouse
in the soft moist sand.
Very gently, he scooped tiny pink animals
into the palm of his hand
and told me to touch them.
We took them to the edge
of the field and put them in the shade
of a sand moist clod.
I remember the very softness
of cool and warm sand and tiny alive mice
and my father saying things.
Indian Guys at the Bar
My head is drawing closer to the bar again
when someone says,
“Damn, my wife just lost her job,
I don’t know what to do.”