I am a citizen of two nations: Shawnee and American. I have one son who is a citizen of three. Before he was born, I learned that, like all infants, he would need to experience a change of heart at birth in order to survive. When a baby successfully breathes in through the lungs, the heart changes from parallel flow to serial flow and the shunt between the right and left atriums closes. Our new bodies obliterate old frontiers. North America is mistakenly called nascent. The Shawnee nation is mistakenly called moribund. America established a mathematical beginning point in 1785 in what was then called the Northwest Territory. Before that, it was known in many languages as the eastern range of the Shawnee, Miami, and Huron homelands. I do not have the Shawnee words to describe this place; the notation that is available to me is 40º38’32.61” N 80º31’9.76” W.
From Instruments of the True Measure. Copyright © 2018 The Arizona Board of Regents. Used with the permission of University of Arizona Press.
The enemy misled that missed the island in the fog,
I believe in one or the other, but both exist now
to confuse me. Dark from dark.
Snow from snow. I believe in one—
Craggy boundary, knife blade at the throat’s slight swell.
From time to time the sound of voices
as through sun-singed grass,
or grasses that we used to insulate the walls of our winter houses—
walrus hides lashed together with rawhide cords.
So warm within the willows ingathered forced into leaf.
I am named for your sister Naviyuk: call me apoŋ.
Surely there are ghosts here, my children sprung
from these deeper furrows.
The sky of my mind against which self-
betrayal in its sudden burn
fails to describe the world.
We, who denied the landscape
and saw the light of it.
Leaning against the stone wall ragged
I began to accept my past and, as I accepted it,
I felt, and I didn’t understand:
I am bound to everyone.
Copyright © 2013 by Joan Kane. Used with permission of the author.
We travel carrying our words.
We arrive at the ocean.
With our words we are able to speak
of the sounds of thunderous waves.
We speak of how majestic it is,
of the ocean power that gifts us songs.
We sing of our respect
and call it our relative.
Translated into English from O’odham by the poet.
’U’a g T-ñi’okı˘
T-ñi’okı˘ ’att ’an o ’u’akc o hihi
Am ka:ck wui dada.
S-ap ‘am o ’a: mo has ma:s g kiod.
mat ’am ’ed.a betank ’i-gei.
’Am o ’a: mo he’es ’i-ge’ej,
mo hascu wud. i:da gewkdagaj
mac ’ab amjed. behě g ñe’i.
Hemhoa s-ap ‘am o ’a: mac si has elid, mo d. ’i:mig.
Used with the permission of the author.
My mother said this to me
long before Beyoncé lifted the lyrics
from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs,
and what my mother meant by
Don’t stray was that she knew
all about it—the way it feels to need
someone to love you, someone
not your kind, someone white,
some one some many who live
because so many of mine
have not, and further, live on top of
those of ours who don’t.
I’ll say, say, say,
I’ll say, say, say,
What is the United States if not a clot
of clouds? If not spilled milk? Or blood?
If not the place we once were
in the millions? America is Maps—
Maps are ghosts: white and
layered with people and places I see through.
My mother has always known best,
knew that I’d been begging for them,
to lay my face against their white
laps, to be held in something more
than the loud light of their projectors
as they flicker themselves—sepia
or blue—all over my body.
All this time,
I thought my mother said, Wait,
as in, Give them a little more time
to know your worth,
when really, she said, Weight,
meaning heft, preparing me
for the yoke of myself,
the beast of my country’s burdens,
which is less worse than
my country’s plow. Yes,
when my mother said,
They don’t love you like I love you,
she meant,
Natalie, that doesn’t mean
you aren’t good.
*The italicized words, with the exception of the final stanza, come from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs song “Maps.”
Copyright © 2019 by Natalie Diaz. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 20, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
Sun makes the day new.
Tiny green plants emerge from earth.
Birds are singing the sky into place.
There is nowhere else I want to be but here.
I lean into the rhythm of your heart to see where it will take us.
We gallop into a warm, southern wind.
I link my legs to yours and we ride together,
Toward the ancient encampment of our relatives.
Where have you been? they ask.
And what has taken you so long?
That night after eating, singing, and dancing
We lay together under the stars.
We know ourselves to be part of mystery.
It is unspeakable.
It is everlasting.
It is for keeps.
MARCH 4, 2013, CHAMPAIGN, ILLINOIS
Reprinted from Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings by Joy Harjo. Copyright © 2015 by Joy Harjo. Used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.
Flaming wonderer! that dost leave vaunting, proud
Ambition boasting its lightning fringed
Immensity—cleaving wings, gaudy dipp’d
In sunset’s blossoming splendors bright and
Tinsel fire, with puny flight fluttering
Far behind! Thou that art cloth’d in mistery
More startling and more glorious than thine own
Encircling fires—profound as the oceans
Of shoreless space through which now thou flyest!
Art thou some erring world now deep engulph’d
In hellish, Judgement fires, with phrenzied ire
And fury hot, like some dread sky rocket
Of Eternity, flaming, vast, plunging
Thro’ immensity, scatt’ring in thy track
The wrathful fires of thine own damnation
Or wingest thou with direful speed, the ear
Of some flaming god of far off systems
Within these skies unheard of and unknown?
Ye Gods! How proud the thought to mount this orb
Of fire—boom thro’ the breathless oceans vast
Of big immensity—quickly leaving
Far behind all that for long ages gone
Dull, gray headed dames have prated of—
Travel far off mystic eternities—
Then proudly, on this little twisting ball
Returning once more set foot, glowing with
The splendors of a vast intelligence—
Frizzling little, puny humanity
Into icy horrors—bursting the big
Wide-spread eyeball of dismay—to recount
Direful regions travers’d and wonders seen!
Why I’d be as great a man as Fremont
Who cross’d the Rocky Mountains, didn’t freeze
And’s got a gold mine!
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on July 21, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
for Phil Young, my father, Robert Hedge Coke, Whitman, and Hughes
America, I sing back. Sing back what sung you in.
Sing back the moment you cherished breath.
Sing you home into yourself and back to reason.
Oh, before America began to sing, I sung her to sleep,
held her cradleboard, wept her into day.
My song gave her creation, prepared her delivery,
held her severed cord beautifully beaded.
My song helped her stand, held her hand for first steps,
nourished her very being, fed her, placed her three sisters strong.
My song comforted her as she battled my reason
broke my long held footing sure, as any child might do.
Lo, as she pushed herself away, forced me to remove myself,
as I cried this country, my song grew roses in each tear’s fall.
My blood veined rivers, painted pipestone quarries
circled canyons, while she made herself maiden fine.
Oh, but here I am, here I am, here, I remain high on each and every peak,
carefully rumbling her great underbelly, prepared to pour forth singing—
and sing again I will, as I have always done.
Never silenced unless in the company of strangers, singing
the stoic face, polite repose, polite, while dancing deep inside, polite
Mother of her world. Sister of myself.
When my song sings aloud again. When I call her back to cradle.
Call her to peer into waters, to behold herself in dark and light,
day and night, call her to sing along, call her to mature, to envision—
Then, she will make herself over. My song will make it so
When she grows far past her self-considered purpose,
I will sing her back, sing her back. I will sing. Oh, I will—I do.
America, I sing back. Sing back what sung you in.
Copyright © 2014 by Allison Adelle Hedge Coke. Originally published in Split This Rock’s The Quarry: A Social Justice Poetry Database.
For ages long, my people have been
Dwellers in this land;
For ages viewed these mountains,
Loved these mesas and these sands,
That stretch afar and glisten,
Glimmering in the sun
As it lights the mighty canons
Ere the weary day is done.
Shall I, a patient dweller in this
Land of fair blue skies,
Tell something of their story while
My shuttle swiftly flies?
As I weave I’ll trace their journey,
Devious, rough and wandering,
Ere they reached the silent region
Where the night stars seem to sing.
When the myriads of them glitter
Over peak and desert waste,
Crossing which the silent runner and
The gaunt of co-yo-tees haste.
Shall I weave the zig-zag pathway
Whence the sacred fire was born;
And interweave the symbol of the God
Who brought the corn—
Of the Rain-god whose fierce anger
Was appeased by sacred meal,
And the trust that my brave people
In him evermore shall feel?
All this perhaps I might weave
As the woof goes to and fro,
Wafting as my shuttle passes,
Humble hopes, and joys and care,
Weaving closely, weaving slowly,
While I watch the pattern grow;
Showing something of my life:
To the Spirit God a prayer.
Grateful that he brought my people
To the land of silence vast
Taught them arts of peace and ended
All their wanderings of the past.
Deftly now I trace the figures,
This of joy and that of woe;
And I leave an open gate-way
For the Dau to come and go.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on November 25, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.
That time I stole a blue Impala in Flagstaff
the first year they made those automatic windows, you know?
I was sixteen and I was cruising down the highway
Hot on the trail to Albuquerque
I was hungry
and I was howling, man.
It was like stealing the best horse in the herd.
Copyright © 2014 by Laura Tohe. This poem originally appeard in Cream City Review. Used with permission of the author.
Immediately after the two brothers entered The Seafood Shoppe with their wide-eyed wives and extra-brown complexioned stepchildren, the shrimp scampi sauce suddenly altered its taste to bitter dishsoap. It took a moment to realize the notorious twosome were "carrying" medicines, and that I was most likely the next target in the supernatural shooting gallery. It was yet another stab at my precious shadow, ne no ke we ni, the one who always Stands First, wildly unafraid but vulnerable. This placement of time, this chance meeting at Long John Silver's had already been discussed over the burning flower clusters, approved, and scheduled for a divine assassination. What an ideal place to invisibly send forth a petraglyph thorn to the sensitive and unsuspecting instep I thought. Out of fear I had to spit out the masticated crustacean into the folded Dutch bandana. I signalled Selene with my eyes: something is terribly wrong here. Even in the old stories, ke ta-a ji mo na ni, my grandmother recited there was always disagreement, jealousy, and animosity between supernatural deities. That actuality for humans, me to se na ni wa ki, however was everpresent. It didn't conclude as an impasse that gave us the weather, the four seasons, the stars, sun, and moon. Everything that was held together. Unfortunately, there could only be one re-creation of earth. If it was requested in the aura of the blue flower that I die, the aura would make sure I die. . . Later, the invisible thorn--when removed by resident-physicians (paying back their medical loans)--would transform into some unidentifiable protoplasm and continue to hide in the more sensitive, cancer-attracting parts of the fish- eater. In the mythical darkness that would follow the stories the luminescent mantle of the kerosene lamp would aptly remind me of stars who cooled down in pre-arranged peace--to quietly wait and glow.
From The Rock Island Hiking Club by Ray Young Bear, published by the University of Iowa Press. © 2001 by Ray Young Bear. Used with permission. All rights reserved.
10. Here on my knees I look for the single animal: you left
ravaged at the edge of a meadow
9. Is everything accounted for? The fingers dipped
beneath the torso—to keep this body bright
8. Every breath we are desperate to take
sounds as if a war lost against a country of promise
7. Discarded halos: the light you remember
in your head—you feed on what is crushed between the teeth
6. America declares these dreams I have every night be re-
dreamed & pressed into names
5. Upended petals of qém’es
abandoned like torn butterfly wings—we’é I pray
4. I pray that nobody
ever hears us
3. An eye gone
bloodshot: I tear through the crisp apple of your throat & find—
2. myself: this—a boy beside a boy. An eyelash
fallen at the base of a valley, our dark bones bursting in-
1. to bloom. I stare into your beloved face & enter: yes,
yes, this nation, under god, its black sky we lay our nightmares to
0. where I am your animal: my Lamb—now eat
me alive.
Copyright © 2019 by Michael Wasson. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 1, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
I dreamt the spirit of the codfish:
in rafters of the mind;
fly out into the winter’s
blue night;
mirth off alder tendrils sashay;
while I set up
my winter tent;
four panels long—beams suspend
I sit & pull blubber strips aged in a poke bag;
I’m shadowing the sun as a new moon icicle
time melts when white hawks come.
Copyright © 2020 by dg nanouk okpik. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 30, 2020 by the Academy of American Poets.
This path our people walked
one hundred two hundred endless years
since the tall grass opened for us
and we breathed the incense that sun on prairie
offers to sky
Peace offering with each breath
each footstep out of woods
to grasslands plotted with history
removal remediation restoration
Peace flag of fringed prairie orchid
green glow within white froth
calling a moth who nightly
seeks the now-rare scent invisible to us
invisible history of this place
where our great-grandfather a boy
beside two priests and 900 warriors
gaze intent in an 1870 photo
his garments white as orchids
Peace flag white banner with red cross
crowned with thorns held by a boy
at the elbow of a priest
beside Ojibwe warriors beside Dakota warriors
Peace offered after smoke and dance
and Ojibwe gifts of elaborate beaded garments
thrown back in refusal
by Dakota Warriors torn with grief
since their brother’s murder
This is the path our people ran
through white flags of prairie plants
Ojibwe calling Dakota back
to sign one last and unbroken treaty
Peace offering with each breath
each footstep out of woods
to grasslands plotted with history
removal remediation restoration
Two Dakota held up as great men
humbled themselves
to an offer of peace
before a long walk south
before our people entered the trail
walking west and north
where you walk now
where we seek the source
the now-rare scent
invisible as history
history the tall grass opens for us
Breathe the incense of sun on prairie
Offer peace to the sky
Copyright © 2016 by Heid E. Erdrich. This poem was commissioned by the Academy of American Poets and funded by a National Endowment for the Arts Imagine Your Parks grant.
Cut from a mail bag
without a return address,
this land whispers its name
from a waterfall’s hairline,
pressed flat under bent knee.
Lifting your head
to look past coming night—
knives whistle.
You scribble an address
to a place where weeds
door the passage back.
Stone in throat,
your hand reaches
to clutch a leaf,
as you turn
toward the rising moon—
dove-winged
Copyright © 2020 by Sherwin Bitsui. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 17, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.