#native poets

– Acoma Pueblo poet At Haak’u Within the community, on the land, in it, and of it, there is a way in all things that Acoma (Haak’u) children are taught. Shadruukaʾàatuunísṿ It is a way of saying. It is a way of saying our life and the way things grow and grow. It is a way of saying the children are growing so quickly. It is a way of saying the plants, which we so lovingly care for in the…

From “Elemental Gratitude” by Eric Gansworth in the June 2018 Native Poets issue of Poetry.

THE FLIGHT OF CROWS

The autumn afternoon is dying o'er The quiet western valley where I lie Beneath the maples on the river shore, Where tinted leaves, blue waters and fair sky Environ all; and far above some birds are flying by To seek their evening haven in the breast And calm embrace of silence, while they sing Te Deums to the night, invoking rest For busy chirping voice and tired wing-- And in the hush of sleeping trees their sleeping cradles swing. In forest arms the night will soonest creep, Where sombre pines a lullaby intone, Where Nature's children curl themselves to sleep, And all is still at last, save where alone A band of black, belated crows arrive from lands unknown. Strange sojourn has been theirs since waking day, Strange sights and cities in their wanderings blend With fields of yellow maize, and leagues away With rivers where their sweeping waters wend Past velvet banks to rocky shores, in canyons bold to end. O'er what vast lakes that stretch superbly dead, Till lashed to life by storm-clouds, have they flown? In what wild lands, in laggard flight have led Their aerial career unseen, unknown, 'Till now with twilight come their cries in lonely monotone? The flapping of their pinions in the air Dies in the hush of distance, while they light Within the fir tops, weirdly black and bare, That stand with giant strength and peerless height, To shelter fairy, bird and beast throughout the closing night. Strange black and princely pirates of the skies, Would that your wind-tossed travels I could know! Would that my soul could see, and, seeing, rise To unrestricted life where ebb and flow Of Nature's pulse would constitute a wider life below! Could I but live just here in Freedom's arms, A kingly life without a sovereign's care! Vain dreams! Day hides with closing wings her charms, And all is cradled in repose, save where Yon band of black, belated crows still frets the evening air. 

do not trust a white man whose idea of progress can be measured in the cultures he destroys the acreage of the land he seizes

who is complicit in white supremacy who takes and thanks with a greasy grin as though what he has done is a gift from civilization to the savage

do not trust a white man whose mouth speaks genocide whose soul is white with ash, and red with blood

#nativeamericanheritagemonth

–Santee poet Look at us We are of earth and water Look at them It is the same Look at us We are suffering all these years Look at them They are connected Look at us We are in pain Look at them Surprised at our anger Look at us We are struggling to survive Look at them Expecting sorrow be benign Look at us We are the ones called pagan Look at them On their arrival Look at us We are called…

They took us on a field trip to the Everglades Where we visited big cypress reservation Most of them died out, teacher said Precious few left on the rez

I remember marveling at the beadwork and artifacts in the museum And the chickees amongst the cypress trees wondering why these things were locked up behind glass, Why this was “just history”, relics of the past Reading the words on the museum plaques; the Seminoles and Creeks were once one people

Something in me lit up, That’s me! That’s me, Wayward Indian without a culture, forced by the whiteness of public education to view colonizers as explorers, My own people as savages Well, the word creek was said But still, “those Indians, they’re dead”

In fourth grade we had to pick a conquistador to do a project on Picking a Native American was not an option

Pick your favorite Spaniard, Who civilized this stinking swampland And saved it’s savage people So I picked desoto That fabled hero who brutalized us Hungry for the riches of our land

This is what my education taught me; That my people no longer really exist, savages swallowed up by European refinement That our land is not ours, and never again will be That an Indian is an Indian is an Indian, Until the white man decides the Indian is white enough that their Indian blood is meaningless

That our culture can be summed up in a museum plaque, That no one among us was ever great, when held up next to the blessed colonizers

I grew up thinking that my indigenous blood was meaningless, that whiteness had even won the war within my own body

The Indians are dead, they said Except for the few who run the museums and hog our tax dollars

The Indians are dead, they said And if that’s true, I must be dead too