FRESH! "Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir" by Deborah Miranda

Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir

by Deborah A. Miranda

“If we allow the pieces of our culture to lie scattered in the dust of history, trampled on by racism and grief, then yes, we are irreparably damaged. But if we pick up the pieces and use them in new ways that honor their integrity, their colors, textures, stories—then we do those pieces justice, no matter how sharp they are, no matter how much handling them slices our fingers and makes us bleed.” Link to Heyday site here

From the Heyday website:  Deborah A. Miranda is an enrolled member of the Ohlone Costanoan Esselen Nation of California, and is also of Chumash and Jewish ancestry. The author of two poetry collections—Indian Cartography, which won the Diane Decorah Award for First Book from the Native Writer’s Circle of the Americas, and The Zen of La Llorona, nominated for the Lambda Literary Award—she also has a collection of essays, The Hidden Stories of Isabel Meadows and Other California Indian Lacunae, forthcoming from the University of Nebraska Press. Miranda is an associate professor of English at Washington and Lee University and says reading lists for her students include as many books by “bad Indians” as possible. Visit Deborah Miranda"s blog: When Turtles Fly

 As Us is a literary space for women of the world.  http://asusjournal.org/

 Letter from the Editors

Dear Readers:
We are excited to bring to you our inaugural issue of As/Us:A Literary Space for Women of the World. The seed for As/Us was planted in Boulder, Co while three Indigenous women writers were discussing writing, the challenges of publishing, and the lack of diversity within the literary world. We came up with the idea of starting our own journal, specifically for Indigenous women. We became excited about the possibility of publishing established writers, like Joy Harjo who are taught in classrooms alongside  emerging writers, some of whom have published, but have not yet received much recognition. By bringing writers in different stages of their careers together we were interested in the conversations that would arise between subject matter, craft and aesthetics. We envisioned a space where readers could find fiction, poetry, spoken word, and art  in dialogue with scholarly works, along with interviews from some of our contributors. We hope to continue the journal for many years to come and want to seek out more international voices and youth features as well.
While Casandra and Tanaya were curating this issue their vision for As/Us expanded to include writers from other underrepresented communities. Just as we were able to see the intersections between the themes and subject matter of all of our contributors’ voices and experiences it is our hope that our readers will contemplate those connections as well. Tanaya and Casandra purposely selected pieces with diverse styles and intentions. In our first issue we have twenty-two contributors, two interviews, and two (forthcoming) reviews. Our Indigenous contributors represent different tribal nations within the U.S. and Canada. We also feature Latina, African-American, and Asian-American writers. Tanaya, Casandra, and Christine believe that showing a pipeline of possibilities for  underrepresented writers is not only needed for our own communities, but for the larger society as well.
With so many stories, words, and visions represented, it felt natural to begin the journal with a creative work that resembled a prayer. Osborn writes “this is how all stories begin,” in her poem about emergence and the importance of story. In the pieces to follow women write about different subjects such as about finding the beauty in your surroundings. Johnson’s spokenword piece “Dawn,” expresses this sentiment well, “show me something unbeautiful,’ she says, /  ‘and I will show you the veil over your eyes and take it away. / And you will see hozho all around you, inside of you.”
Just as the landscape is integral to “Dawn,” we have included other pieces that are firmly grounded in specific geographies. In Kao’s creative non-fiction essay “Roots and Leaves” personal history is interlinked with culture and place. She writes, “I am unearthing a foreign culture with my own language, digging up characters that lived through the characters they wrote.”  A similar sense of familial history occurs in “Winter Garden” where we are presented with a complex sense of family, one that is struggling with loss, but also thriving by cultivating the family they have by preparing to bring in a new life. In these two pieces we see how landscapes express the changes of not only seasons, but also relationships.
“Movie Time,” an excerpt from Mantz memoir, subtly renders tension as if watching a film, with moments in scene slowing unfolding to reveal family dysfunction. Unlike Mantz, Givhan’s short story directly tackles relationships by focusing on the unhealthy aspects of romantic partnership and the complexity of desire. This type of addictive love is also seen in the poem, “Women the Usual Way,” which explores abuse through observation.
We were interested in our contributors’ use of observation as a tool to expound upon stereotypes and roles women are sometimes forced into. Broyles’ “Summer Camp 1978” contrasts the innocence of first gaining awareness of the body to the harsh reality where women’s bodies can also be threatened. Wurth’s poems continue with these themes of the female body as it is understood in relation to the male body, “I came to understand what those hands wanted of me.” Ideas between body and identity intersect. This connection was demonstrated well in “A Day At The Races,” a poem told in seven voices, which utilizes hair as a motif to discuss race, self-perception, and outsider perceptions among other topics from different vantage points. Just as Lythcott-Haims shows the pressure placed on women in terms of expectations and appearances, Simpson addresses a consciousness about how white people perceive Indigenous people. Simpson’s poem incorporates speech acts such as “wear a skirt that covers your knees and spice nylon stockings,” using directives to tell the speaker how to act.
Because the the female body is often politicized these works take on political connotation. In Long Soldier’s poem we see the body, its strength, power, the ability to harm, but also lament and question all of its capabilities. In “Doll Making” the body is rendered political as we are shown children in the Philippines laboring in industrial schools. Andrews writes about the harsh conditions of child labor, “Our first initiation our fingers bled / red rosebud drops. Sucking thumbs.” Other voices write about political subjects, identity, and history. A powerful example is “Sons of Carlisle.” In it Atsitty examines the aftermath of boarding schools, “new marks: Abraham, Albert, Edward, George, / Joseph, Isaac. And these are they who were / once taught to look, to pray    with eyes / open. Boys – shed our childhood names…” Ancestral connection is passed along through story, giving the speaker a specific sense of identity. In “The Tipping Point” Najmi writes, “my stories are served to me on small plates / my stories are only half of yours.”
Artists and writers have responsibilities to address historical issues, but also contemporary issues, which we see in Belleau’s poetry written in response the Idle No More movement and First Nations rights. Others pieces tackle ongoing subjects like poverty facing Indigenous peoples. In “walmart,” northSun writes, “she smiles at me  and / says ‘ welcome to walmart’ / minimum wage is / better than nothing.”
All of these stories share common threads, demonstrating not only what it means to be a woman, but also human in this world. The voices weave together the individual and collective experience, serving their words to us on plates to feed each other.
Enjoy!
Casandra and Tanaya

About Us

We seek to publish both emerging and established women writers. It is our hope that As/Us will be a convergence of international voices that speak to both diverse and shared experiences. We are open to works that span a variety of topics – work that challenges conventions and aesthetics either on a narrative or formal level, work with purpose, vision, and something at stake. Send us work that you think deserves a space in the world!

As/Us is published twice a year online with a yearly “Best Of” print issue.

Please visit AS US at http://asusjournal.org/

Native American Women's Poetry

Great Lakes Girls by Teri Greeves

Drunken Boat No. 15 features several Native women poets including Natalie Diaz, Natanya Ann Pulley, Joan Kane, dg okpik, Jennifer Foerster, Diane Glancey, Erika Wurth, Erin Bad Hand,Kateri Menominee  and Kimberly Becker, among others.  Layli Long Soldier, who edited the portfolio, writes in her introduction:   

Working with the poems in this folio, I remembered the introduction to Reinventing the Enemy’s Language—an anthology of contemporary Native women’s writings of North America. There, Joy Harjo wrote, “The literature of the aboriginal people of North America defines America. It is not exotic. The concerns are particular, yet often universal. Anyone of these lands shares in the making of this literature, this history, these connections, these songs. It is a connection […] constructed of the very earth on which we stand.” Harjo wrote this in the 90s and I mused on how to introduce the works in this, Drunken Boat’s collection, now.  Read the rest here.

2012 Lifetime Achievement Award Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas

  

LeAnne Howe (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma), author of fiction, poetry, screenplays, creative non-fiction, plays, and scholarly articles, is the winner of the 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas. A well respected and honored author, LeAnne Howe’s books include Shell Shaker (2001), winner of an American Book Award in 2002 from the Before Columbus Foundation; Equinoxes Rouge, the French translation of Shell Shaker, a 2004 finalist for Prix Medici Estranger, (one of France’s top literary awards); Evidence of Red (2005), winner of an Oklahoma Book Award in Poetry and Wordcraft Circle Award in 2006; and Howe’s most recent novel, the acclaimed Miko Kings: An Indian Baseball Story (2007) was the 2009-2010 Read-In Selection at Hampton University in Hampton Virginia.

Howe is screenwriter and on-camera narrator for the 90-minute PBS documentary Indian Country Diaries: Spiral of Fire (2006); she is also writer/co-producer of Playing Pastime: American Indian Fast-Pitch Softball and Survival, both documentaries with James Fortier (a three-time Emmy award winner filmmaker). Her scholarly work has appeared in Clearing a Path: Theorizing the Past in Native American Studies (2001), Pre-removal Choctaw History: Exploring New Paths (2008) and Reasoning Together: Native Critics Collective (2008), for which Howe is listed as a co-author. Reasoning Together was named one of the most influential Native texts of the first decade of the 21st century.

In 2010-11, Howe was a J. William Fulbright Scholar at the University of Jordan, Amman, where she taught in the graduate program as well as conducted research for a new novel. In March 2011, she was awarded the Tulsa Library Trust’s “American Indian Author Award” in Tulsa, Oklahoma; and the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education named Howe one of 30 American Indians authors to celebrate during Native American Heritage Month, November 2011. Additionally, Howe’s multi-genre autobiographical and scholarly prose essay, “My Mothers, My Uncles, Myself” appears in Here First: Autobiographical Essays by Native American Writers (2001), and her scholarly work on Tribalography[1] (a term she coined) has found traction with other literary critics in the field such as professors Dean Rader, Jill Doerfler, Joseph Bauerkemper, among others. 

MORE INFO HERE

Red Riot: Emerging Native American Voices and Poetics by Natanya Ann Pulley

Bunky Echo Hawk 'Colonizer Bunny'

  
Natanya Ann Pulley guest blogs on 'Girls in a Tight Place.'  Read all about it HERE



Excerpt:  I began to write non-fiction without the pressure to speak to/for a people held in, between or from tradition. I wrote for me: the me that threw my arms up and said, I don’t know how to do any of it! How to recover a heritage—how to speak to a past time—how to hold it all together. My mother left the Navajo reservation when she was five to live with an LDS family in the Indian Placement Program.  There is too much in that one line for any one story, for one book, for one life. There is too much in it and I have learned to respect it. To respect that it is a still-beating thing. That my heritage shifts in color, size, texture. It sings many songs and continually cuts its own legs off to start again. It boils to steam and drifts to airs and comes back to me in rain, wind, in breath. In smog.

Trilling!

Today I was thrilled (trill-worthy!) to see Dine author and fellow co-editor Natanya Ann Pulley's "An Open Letter to Johnny Depp's Tonto" published in McSweeney's Internet Tendency. This is major coup (yes, a pun!) for Native writers; we don't often see our names published in mainstream publications and most certainly not in this context--a letter of protest, but a really scathingly funny, clever and dare I say, non-confrontational, letter of protest.

For any of you just tuning in Natanya and I have been compiling submissions for "Good Medicine: A Native Anthology of Humor" to be published by Lost Horse Press. This is a photo of me posing next to my inner bitch, and this is a photo of Baby Natanya posing with a glob of green
slime, or maybe her lunch? Who am I to question the traditional Navajo cuisine.

Big Poetry Giveaway

I'm taking part in the 2012 Big Poetry Giveaway created by the poet Kelli Russell Agodon for National Poetry Month.

When I first heard Giveaway I thought, "It's too early for the Oil Celebration!" Giveaways --also called potlatch by the Northwest Coast tribes -- are big happenings in Indian country.

But for this giveaway I'm taking part in the Book of Kells 2012 Big Poetry Giveaway created by poet Kelli Russell Agodon for National Poetry Month. I'll be giving away a copy of my book "Outlaws, Renegades and Saints," published by Greenfield Review Press and a copy of the groundbreaking anthology "Without Reservation; Indigenous Erotica," edited and published by Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm of Kegedonce Press.

Want to win? Just leave a comment on this post now through April 30 and I'll draw winners out of my medicine basket for each book during the week of May 1. To see the full list of poet bloggers taking part in the giveaway, visit Kelli's blog, Book of Kells.

About the books:

Being a mixed-blood is no easy road, and Tiffany Midge makes her art from the collision of irreconcilables. The writing is sometimes funny and heart stopping at the same time: “It’s my birthday. I ask my mother, ‘when I grow up will I be a full-blooded Indian?’” Midge’s poetry is informed by an in-your-face refusal either to romanticize her life, or to accept the place that has been “assigned” to Indian peoples: to accept extinction: “listen/can you hear the dead talking?/They are saving and resurrecting us all.” ~ from Oyate

At the Oil Celebration Powwow

i.

At the oil celebration powwow give-

aways are the gift that keeps on giving.

The Indians true to their traditions continue

to give what the whites have taken from them—

ii.

food when they were starving

blankets when they were freezing

clothing when they were naked

iii.

Ethel Iron Thunder gives a Pendleton wrap to Minnie Spotted Elk/

Minnie Spotted Elk gives a star quilt to Silas Tail Spins/

Silas Tail Spins gives 20 lbs of frozen venison to Victoria Walking Child/

Victoria Walking Child gives a case of chokecherry preserves to John & Myra Two Feathers/

John & Myra Two Feathers gives Cain Long Bow $100 towards his college tuition/

Cain Long Bow gives Alice Brought Plenty 10 yards of bargain basement fabric/

Alice Brought Plenty gives Ruby Savior a plastic bag of accumulated Copenhagen chew-top-lids/

Ruby Savior gives Mary & Victor Red Wing a beaded cradleboard for their new arrival /

Mary & Victor Red Wing gives Scarlet Comes At Night their family’s secret frybread recipe/

Scarlet Comes At Night gives Ethel Iron Thunder insulated rabbit fur slippers and matching

blue mittens and scarf.

iv.

Define Indian giver in 10 words or less:

All of the above.

v.

Grandma Iron Thunder tells me

that Giveaways are to Indians

what Christmas is to white people.

~Tiffany Midge "Outlaws, Renegades and Saints"

Without Reservation
Edited By Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm Co-Published with Huia Publishers, New Zealand.

Poetry by Joy Harjo, Sherman Alexie, Jack Forbes, and Richard Van Camp among many others.
The writing in the anthology is overwhelmingly contemporary, although some stories and poems are based on old tales. Ipellie,an Inuit writer based in Ottawa, is one such spinner of tales, including Summit with Sedna, the Mother of Sea Beasts, a story about the coupling of an Inuit shaman and the mythological underwater creature called Sedna. Other stories are thoroughly modern, including 'Year of the Dog', a hilarious and ribald tale about some porno addicts in the contemporary Northwest Territories.

We Can See It With Our Eyes Closed ~ by Joy Harjo

You ask me what I am thinking when we make love
and our eyes are closed and the sun is climbing halfway
to the roof and the neighborhood dogs are all in love
with the spirit dog who makes the rounds and tortures them
with dreams of hills and running with the smell of heat
and then the train adds to the song of progress
making a web from city to city,
backdoor to backdoor and I know it is possible to
fly without complications of metal and engineering
and all the payoffs, paybacks and terrible holes
in the earth and here we are in the territory of the wind,
surrounded by devils and thieves, forgotten by a trickster god
who has a wicked sense of humor
yet there is something quite compelling
about this skin we're in, a solid planet of gases and water
doesn't tell the whole story. I am intrigued by cloud
language and see you approaching as a red flower in a meadow
of yellow, or you are an apparition of rain just before or after
a famine of butterflies. We make an electrical reaction
like carbon dioxide, and did I remember to blow out
the candles lit for those who are dying and are leaving
or will leave this place? Grief is a land of wet tenderness. We are all
dying and will leave a trail like the plane jetting east in the direction
that becomes all directions, become all the millions of souls here together
looking for god or a little something to eat,
all of us blown away by the mystery of nothingness
as we shop in the streets for trinkets or bread.
We've been here before, thinking in skin and our pleasure
and pain feeds the plants, makes clouds. I see it with my eyes
closed. It's so beautiful. There's the telephone.


The UGH: Uncivilized Grunting Heathen drawing is open from now through ALL OF APRIL, National Poetry Month!


If you'd like to be entered, please leave your name and email address by midnight, APRIL 30th, 2012 in the comment section of this post and I'll be drawing 2 lucky winners for the books during the week of May 1st, 2012.


Good luck & Good Read

Gerald Vizenor is 2011 American Book Award Recipient

From UMN Today, article by Carolyn Gonzales

Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico Dis­tin­guished Pro­fes­sor of Amer­i­can Stud­ies Ger­ald Vizenor is the recip­i­ent of the 2011 Amer­i­can Book Award for Shrouds of White Earth. The award is pre­sented by the Before Colum­bus Foun­da­tion. The book is about con­tem­po­rary Native Amer­i­can Indian artist Dogroy Beaulieu, who reveals his story to a native writer.

Dogroy is a painter by nature, an intu­itive vision­ary artist. He cre­ates shrouds of sac­ri­ficed and cru­ci­fied ani­mals and birds, the faint traces of nat­ural motion on linen, at his stu­dio on the White Earth Nation in Min­nesota. The very sight of the shrouds tor­ments the tra­di­tional fas­cists on the reser­va­tion, and the faint traces of native totems haunt the patrons of gal­leries and cura­tors of muse­ums. “I cre­ate traces of totemic crea­tures, paint vision­ary char­ac­ters in mag­i­cal flight, native scenes in the bright col­ors of sur­vivance,” Dogroy declares.

His artis­tic sen­ti­ments and shamanic trib­ute to the shrouds, how­ever, do not pro­tect him from envi­ous ene­mies on the reser­va­tion. Dogroy is ban­ished by casino politi­cians, in fla­grant vio­la­tion of the new Con­sti­tu­tion of the White Earth Nation for his artis­tic tease, his baroque mock­ery and his ironic portrayals.

This unfor­get­table jour­ney of dis­cov­ery and cre­ativ­ity ranks as one of the finest sto­ries from the pen of the irre­sistibly witty and insight­ful Ger­ald Vizenor.

“The inven­tor of inven­tion rides again. In this book, the mas­ter trick­ster takes on the dis­ci­plines of visual art, nar­ra­tive, and song in his ongo­ing cam­paign against vic­timry, to set natives upright and to insure the truth of native sur­vival. Ger­ald Vizenor is the healer of irony with his focus on the native par­a­digm. What a plea­sure to ride into Vizenor­land, where col­ors spread and horses fly. Vizenor is my cho­sen com­poser of words.” — Diane Glancy, author The Rea­son for Crows

Vizenor’s many books include Inte­rior Land­scapes, Sec­ond Edi­tion: Auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Myths and Metaphors, also pub­lished by SUNY Press; Fugi­tive Poses: Native Amer­i­can Indian Scenes of Absence and Pres­ence; Man­i­fest Man­ners: Nar­ra­tives on Postin­dian Sur­vivance; Hiroshima Bugi: Atomu 57; and Sur­vivance: Nar­ra­tives of Native Pres­ence.

Fresh!

Fresh!

Out of University of Arizona Press and soon to be available in October is SING; Poetry from the Indigenous Americas.

SING might seem familiar to devotees of Ndn poetry and that's because a third of it was in a journal called To Topos: Poetry International Published in 2006 by Oregon State University.

From the University of Arizona Press website:

Editor and poet Allison Hedge Coke assembles this multilingual collection of Indigenous American poetry, joining voices old and new in songs of witness and reclamation. Unprecedented in scope, Sing gathers more than eighty poets from across the Americas, covering territory that stretches from Alaska to Chile, and features familiar names like Sherwin Bitsui, Louise Erdrich, Joy Harjo, Lee Maracle, and Simon Ortiz alongside international poets—both emerging and acclaimed—from regions underrepresented in anthologies.

They write from disparate zones and parallel experience, from lands of mounded earthwork long-since paved, from lands of ancient ball courts and the first great cities on the continents, from places of cold, from places of volcanic loam, from zones of erased history and ongoing armed conflict, where “postcolonial” is not an academic concept but a lived reality. As befits a volume of such geographical inclusivity, many poems here appear in multiple languages, translated by fellow poets and writers like Juan Felipe Herrera and Cristina Eisenberg.

A reading from SING at The University of Arizona Poetry Center, November 7th, 2011, 7pm will feature editor Allison Hedgecoke, Sherwin Bitsui, Travis Hedge Coke, Natalie Diaz, Mariah Gover, Simon Ortiz, Layli Long Soldier, Laura Tohe, Orlando White, Steven Yazzie, and Ofelia Zepeda.














http://poetry.arizona.edu/news-event/2011/11/reading-sing-poetry-indigenous-americas

Our Blood Remembers by Lois Red Elk

If you Google Lois Red Elk you will be pleased to discover dozens and dozens of hits that feature her film roles. I’ve enjoyed many of Lois’ films over the years: Skins, Lakota Woman, Outside Ozona, just as much as I’ve enjoyed her published poetry over the years. This year Lois released her first collection of poetry Our Blood Remembers by Many Voices Press. Congratulations Lois!

The following is a review from The Herald News out of Roosevelt County, Montana.

By Lara Shefelbine

A Wolf Point woman who has written for more than 50 years has published a collection of poems in her first book, bringing alive numerous memories of her lifetime, childhood and family experiences on the Fort Peck Reservation.

In the book Our Blood Remembers, Lois Red Elk weaves together a series of anecdotes and thoughts from her lifetime using dazzling, imaginative poetry.

Red Elk, a member of the Sioux Nation and an enrolled member of the Fort Peck Tribes, tells of her childhood spent growing up between Poplar and Wolf Point and the lessons she learned being raised by her father, mother and influential grandmothers.

Not only does the author detail meaningful events of her lifetime, Red Elk also shares some of her favorite Dakota/Lakota words and phrases. Her perspective brings a new light to topics ranging from the importance and significance of family to the exploitation of Native American culture. The content of the poems contained in Our Blood Remembers ranges from the distant past and the old ways to the present and the changes that have occurred with the passage of time.

All in all, Red Elk offers an undisguised look at the Sioux culture that defines her life and encourages us to feel the emotions that run deep in the blood, which truly does remember.

Our Blood Remembers was published by Many Voices Press of Flathead Valley Community College. It is available at Fort Peck Community College, where Red Elk teaches Indian studies, and online at Amazon.com.

Grandmother Praying

by Lois Red Elk


...


Every morning it was a ritual; I would hear her stirring,

knew she was putting on her moccasins, bed creaking

told me she was collecting her hair into one long braid,

nimble fingers flexing then pulling a robe around her



motherly frame. Her breathing was steady but hurried,

sometimes a cough or a hum, to let us know she was

beginning her time with the new day. The door would

open quietly, fresh air would flush through the rooms,



then out the back windows leaving sweet smells of

dew on morning grass. These moments that have been

imprinted in my mind, I bring back weekly, make

them my own present knowledge, my faith. I see



where she is standing along side our old log house,

watch the morning breeze lift loose hairs around her

temples into fine ripples. Her dark eyes receive spirits

who dwell in sun’s rays, just above earth and warmly



mingle with quivering poplar leaves and songs of

meadowlark and robin. To the east, where all life

begins, she raises a hand to touch the Great Spirit’s

space, the place where connection is made with the



sacred world. In her other hand she carries a small

braided circle of sweet grass, mother earths generously

imparted, fragrant hair as her communion offering from

the mortal, to ancestors and angels. Grandmothers



whisper softly unifies with the essence of increasing

light, her greeting, her acknowledgment of the sacredness

has begun. Two slight steps and her body faces south.

She bows in reverence, humbly lowering her face as a



common human being portraying the difficulty to stand

upright before the moving power of the creator. A tear

slides to the soil, another sacrifice from her frail stature

as she asks forgiveness for the failures of her people and



her offspring. She knows the difficulty of maintaining

custom and practice, how insistent dark energies pry away

loved ones from wisdom and grace to error and ignorance.

And, she knows this direction of growth will win the battle,



that all will be forgiven and restored. Her body

straightens and is strengthen as she meets the west,

meets that dark strength approaching and forming

into healing clouds. It is where the infinite voice of



Thunderbirds lightning oath will bring renewal.

Grandmothers knows that source of replenishing rain

brings needed purification. She thanks all the powers

who will quench the thirst of all life. And she knows



she too will have the comfort of thunders blessing. She

has come full circle. The peace of the north welcomes

her and her prayers – that tireless course she claims as

wont. She will witness and celebrate abundant rewards



for a people reclaiming birthright then receiving the fruit

of supplication. That sacred journey through the morning,

the universe has been with the Great Spirit as direction,

her devotion in life. She knows this has always been the



true spirit of her people. This day, that collective spirit,

that humble utterance from a woman dedicated to her

ancestry, is brought before eternity, before the witness

of the all knowing, loving entity, beholding for all time.

Native Poets in D.C.

This is the link to the web cast for the auspicious reading of "The Florida Review, Native Issue" at the National Museum of the American Indian this last January. I couldn't go because I didn't have anything to wear, that being among my most preeminent concerns, vain as I am.

See, you assume I'm listening to these web casts, but I'm actually mentally cataloging people's outfits. I once panned a highly respected poet because I thought her blouse was really unflattering. And don't get me started on accessories! Just because access is in accessory doesn't mean you have an obligation to drape it on your body.

I was very pleased and delighted with the ensembles this fine group of poets happened to wear to the reading -- it can be hard to pull off in the middle of winter! It's nearly impossible to wear cute shoes in the winter let alone cute shoes that happen to match your outfit!

Black was a very dominant color for the program; I suspect the organizers gently suggested to the poets that black would be the most flattering for the camera, plus it's so slimming, how could you go wrong?

I bought a very cute velveteen black dress this winter, ordered from a catalog ( I had planned to wear it to a reading in Missoula, Montana) but when it arrived it had very little resemblance to the color black at all--it was more like a pewter or blueish gray color. I thought I could live with it, but there really is no substitute for black and I don't care what Tim Gunn might say about brown being the new black, there just is no substitute. Speaking of ordering from catalogs: a friend of mine ordered a velour hoodie from a catalog; she selected the color ZODIAC, thinking surely it was black. Except it wasn't. It was brown. Do you think zodiac is brown? Definitely not!

I'm super pleased to have this webcast, so many shiny outfits! They coordinate so well with the poetical part of the program. Enjoy! (P.S. You'll notice a handful of supermodels in this webcast, I don't know why Native poets are getting so much better looking than the previous wave, but they appear to be much taller and with better teeth; present company excluded, of course! ;-)

"Sure, that poem was a'right, but did you see her SHOES?!"

This is the link again.

Is 'Native Erotica' an oxymoron?

I wanted to compile a list of Native publications with erotica as a theme. A few years ago, the erotic seemed to be conspicuously absent from the body of contemporary Native literature, as it were. Or it didn't have a large presence among the critical discourse or perspectives. Interestingly enough, it was vital and present in two-spirit writings; the first writer that comes to mind is Chrystos. There was never any question as to whether her poetry detailed the transcendent and sometimes harrowing aspects of relationships and sexuality.

Ojibway author Drew Hayden Taylor addresses the puzzling myth that Natives are asexual beings. In his essay, "Indian Love Call," he writes: "In the vast majority of non-Native literature, Aboriginal characters, just as they never have a sense of humour, are rarely ever viewed as sexual beings. And if they are, their sexuality is not healthy. Kidnapping, rape and other assorted defilements are the order of the day on this particular pop culture menu. Tender love stories involving Native people are scarcer than priests at a residential school reunion."

In order to remedy this Taylor edited the anthology "Me Sexy: An Exploration of Native Sex and Sexuality."

Taylor writes: "If you’ve ever wondered about the relative abundance of pubic hair among women and men of the First Nations, you don’t have to feel alone anymore." Those are comforting words.

In 2003, Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm's press Kegedonce published "Without Reservations: Indigenous Erotica." Following this collection, Kegedonce has published several other amazing First Nations' poets running along this same theme of love and erotica. Poets such as Al Hunter's "The Recklessness of Love." And Joanne Arnott's "Steepy Mountain: Love Poetry.

University of Arizona's literary magazine "Red Ink," came out with an erotica edition in 2002 (Cover art above).

"Indigenous Erotica is political. More than that, it's stimulating, inspiring, beautiful, and sometimes explicit. It's written by indigenous writers, painted by Indigenous painters, filmed by Indigenous filmmakers, photographed by Indigenous photographers, sung by Indigenous singers." -- Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm

Perhaps encouraged or inspired by these collections and anthologies I put out the chapbook "Guiding the Stars to Their Campfire, Driving the Salmon to Their Beds."

Which I intended to act as balms to comfort hearts in danger of breaking. There is a meditative, dreamy quality to many of the poems and a commentary on many of our creation stories and myths.

But what is poetry if not love poetry; all poetry is love poetry isn't it?

sweetheart when we make love press brown skins & lovely bones together and are 2 halfbreed hearts grooving to the same fullblood dance we create not only a whole indian song (your chippewa chants to my lakota tune) but sweetheart in the dark we become the entire tribe -- Tiffany Midge

The poet Deborah Miranda wrote a compelling paper called "Dildos, Hummingbirds, and Driving Her Crazy: Searching for American Indian Women's Love Poetry and Erotics," which was inspired from the absence of Native poets in a course she enrolled in at the University of Washington called "Women's Love Poetry and Erotics." Much of Miranda's own poetry runs the gamut of love and erotica; her collections "The Zen of La Llorona," and "Indian Cartography," contain exquisite thresholds and pronouncements, celebrations and laments in the ways of love.

Love Poem to a Butch Woman

by Deborah A. Miranda

This is how it is with me:

so strong, I want to draw the egg

from your womb and nourish it in my own.

I want to mother your child made only

of us, of me, you: no borrowed seed

from any man. I want to re-fashion

the matrix of creation, make a human being

from the human love that passes between

our bodies. Sweetheart, this is how it is:

when you emerge from the bedroom

in a clean cotton shirt, sleeves pushed back

over forearms, scented with cologne

from an amber bottle—I want to open

my heart, the brightest aching slit

of my soul, receive your pearl.

I watch your hands, wait for the sign

that means you’ll touch me,

open me, fill me; wait for that moment

when your desire leaps inside me.


Mohawk poet Janet Rogers has just released a collection of spoken word called "Red Erotic." The book also features photographs of erotic works by eight Indigenous artists. Rogers has been up to a lot, blurring the line between performance, spoken word and written expression. She was featured in this interview at Black Coffee Poet.

I'm sure I've left out of excellent stuff and when I hear of new things I'll add them to my growing list.