#Native poetry

[uwmspeccoll]

Voices of the Land

What better way to celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day than to highlight this landmark anthology that commemorates the Indigenous Peoples of North America? When the Light of the World was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry, edited by Joy Harjo with Leanne Howe, Jennifer Elise Foerster, is a curated collection that features the poetry of 160 poets each showcasing a distinct voice from nearly 100 Indigenous Nations. This is the first edition from 2020, published by W. W. Norton & Company in New York.

The anthology is the first to provide a historically comprehensive collection of Native poetry. The literary traditions of Native Americans, the original poets of this country, date back centuries. The book opens with a blessing from Pulitzer Prize winner American Kiowa/Cherokee N. Scott Momaday (1934-2024) and contains introductions from contributing editors for five geographically organized sections. Each section begins with a poem from traditional oral literature and closes with emerging poets, creating a rich and diverse tapestry of Indigenous voices.

Joy Harjo, a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, is a prominent figure in the literary world. She is known for her work as a poet, musician, playwright, and author. In addition to her contributions to literature, Harjo is also a celebrated performer and has released several albums combining poetry and music. In 2019, she made history by becoming the first Native American United States Poet Laureate and only the second to serve three terms. Throughout her career, Harjo has been a vocal advocate for Indigenous rights and has used her art to shed light on the experiences of Native peoples.

The following is an excerpt from Harjo’s introduction to this work:

“The anthology then is a way to pass on the poetry that has emerged from rich traditions of the very diverse cultures of indigenous peoples from these indigenous lands, to share it. Most readers will have no idea that there is or was a single Native poet, let alone the number included in this anthology. Our existence as sentient human beings in the establishment of this country was denied. Our presence is still an afterthought, and fraught with tension, because our continued presence means that the mythic storyline of the founding of this country is inaccurate. The United States is a very young country and has been in existence for only a few hundred years. Indigenous peoples have been here for thousands upon thousands of years and we are still here.”

View other Indigenous Peoples' Day posts.

View other posts from our Native American Literature Collection.

-Melissa (Stockbridge-Munsee), Special Collections Graduate Intern

We acknowledge that in Milwaukee we live and work on traditional Potawatomi, Ho-Chunk, and Menominee homelands along the southwest shores of Michigami, part of North America’s largest system of freshwater lakes, where the Milwaukee, Menominee, and Kinnickinnic rivers meet and the people of Wisconsin’s sovereign Anishinaabe, Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Oneida, and Mohican nations remain present.

[bones-ivy-breath]

Angels don't come to the reservation. Bats, maybe, or owls, boxy mottled things. Coyotes, too. They all mean the same thing— death. And death eats angels, I guess, because I haven't seen an angel fly through this valley ever.

Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Rezervation by Natalie Diaz

[laikacore]

i finally found the thing i've been looking for

searching for, for years

i finally found it on an island out east

and there it tasted just as i'd imagined it would

rich chocolate, delicious and sweet

where i couldn't smell the difference in the air

but i could feel it on my skin

where i found myself in that rich red dirt

where it fades to soft amber sand

where it fades to an endless horizon of steely blue

and when i found it again here

at home, in the gray world

of tall glass buildings and honking cars

and the gasoline i can smell

it doesn't quite taste the same here, no

synthetic sugar, not quite right

not like it did on that island out east

with the rolling hills and the deep green trees

and the goats and the cows and the potato fields

ah, that's home, that's where i'm from

if not me then my family

and my family's family

l'nuk, on the mi'kma'ki

prince edward island/epekwitk by laika wallace

[woodsfae]

Chris La Tray. Descended from a Travel-Worn Satchel. 2021.

[apteryxdrake]

[For those with screen readers (and a head's up there are letters with macrons on them, I have no clue how they are read by readers but the macrons on letters are the correct spelling for Maori words), image is a poem:]

Kupu rere kē

My friend was advised to italicise all the foreign words in her poems. This advice came from a well-meaning woman with NZ poetry on her business card and an English accent in her mouth.

I have been thinking about this advice.

The convention of italicising words from other languages clarifies that some words are imported: it ensures readers can tell the difference between a foreign language and the language of home.

I have been thinking about this advice.

Marking the foreign words is also a kindness: every potential reader is reassured that although you're expected to understand the rest of the text, it's fine to consult a dictionary or native speaker for help with the italics.

I have been thinking about this advice.

Because I am a contrary person, at first I was outraged -- but after a while I could see she had a point:

when the foreign words are comouflaged in plain type you can forget how they came to be there, out of place, in the first place.

I have been thinking about this advice and I have decided to follow it.

Now all of my readers will be able to remember which words truly belong in Aotearoa and which do not.

Alice Te Punga Somerville, Always Italicise: How to Write While Colonised - Kupu rere kē

--------------------

For literal and cultural context (not just for tau iwi/folks from other countries) but also for autistic folks like myself who often miss subtext and need the punchline explained: Aotearoa is the local/Te Reo Māori name for New Zealand. Here in Aotearoa we were violently colonised by the English, in some ways the colonisation continues with things like in this poem; an English woman recommending that when writing poetry one should itacise every word that isn't specifically English, which includes Te Reo Māori (our local Maori language) because it's "foreign". Another relevant aspect of ongoing colonialism is where there are some pākehā (white folk born in Aotearoa) who have appropriated Te Reo words into English, mispronounce them and then get angry when Maori request that they pronounce them properly. Such people often yell and scream about their mispronunciation being the "correct" English pronunciation. And the racism inevitably comes out in their yelling. All from a request to at the very least pronounce the words they've stolen into English properly (which they do for actual foreign languages like French).

So the poet, by italicising every English word and not the Te Reo words, they're saying that English is the foreign language not Te Reo Māori.

Which is kickass.

Alice Te Punga Somerville, Always Italicise: How to Write While Colonised - Kupu rere kē

[thoughtkick]

Listen to the wind it talks. Listen to the silence it speaks. Listen to your heart it knows.

Native American Proverb

[flagellant]

How To Be Native American: Five Tips To Acknowledging The Indian In You!

Wonder why you're writing this. Debate with yourself about the form and the function. By making a performance out of your criticism of the inherent performativity of being a white-passing Native, is that denying or adding to the power imbalance that actually white people already have over your life, your identity, your culture? Ponder blood quantum for the seventh time today and really just sit down and ask yourself, "Is this going to be the metaphor that justifies my existence within my culture to white strangers online?" Accept it probably won't be and write this inadvisably anyway. They weren't ever going to get it anyway, but for once, this isn't about them.

Do your research! Take your knowledge and academize it. If you can't cite your sources when you try and explain why this privilege is killing you, are you really a victim of genocide? Or are you just 1/16th Cherokee Princess? FUN FACT: So many people are "Pretendians" that anthropological scholars are trying to examine the psychology behind why! You know why, of course. They feel so alienated from their culture as settlers that they cling to whatever they can, like mud on a duck's bill, steadily reshaping Turtle Island in their image. Remember that by criticizing Pretendians you simply give people more reason to assume you're one. Pretend this is fine.

Read Braiding Sweetgrass again. It won't help, but the words are familiar enough by this point that you can start the grief process a full three chapters ahead of the words you're thinking in your head. Wonder if this is all you'll ever get to have: Stories of dead grandmothers and dead strawberries and dead nations, bones piled upon bones with none of the nitrogen fixing jack shit. Think about how you have never gotten to braid sweetgrass with someone who understands who and what you are. Reread the last few sentences because your tears have blurred the ink so badly at this point it's like trying to be fluent in a language no one will teach you.

Brush your hair out, because you have gingery ringlets rather than sleek, thick flint. Your name is Red Fox Jesus Man and you've only got a little bit of a complex about it. Think about how, when people claim you look like Jesus, they aren't talking about the Middle Eastern Jew, they're talking about the Italian. You aren't even a little bit fucking Italian. Microaggressions are a form of racial validation, right? Especially if they aren't intended to be, right?

Light a candle for your dead grandfather. None of his stories got passed down onto you or your mother or your father. Maybe none of your great-great-grandfather's stories got passed down to him either. This is a comfort, in a selfish, self-destructive way. If you don't know the names of the teachers in the Mission your people were sent to, that is a sort of pyrrhic victory. Not a meaningful one, but scraps will fill your stomach if you settle for enough of them.

[lesbianlenses]

[adhd-languages]

I loooove writing terrible poetry in my target languages. This is borderline incomprehensible and grammatically fucked? No, no, you misunderstand, it’s a

✨stylistic choice✨

[blessedarethebinarybreakers]

“How would that carpenter and his pregnant wife have circumnavigated the Kafka­esque network of Israeli settlements, roadblocks and closed military zones in the occupied West Bank? Would Mary have had to experience labor or childbirth at a checkpoint, as one in 10 pregnant Palestinian women did between 2000 and 2007?... ‘If Jesus were to come this year, Bethlehem would be closed,’ declared Father Ibrahim Shomali, a Catholic priest of the city’s Beit Jala parish, in December 2011. ‘Mary and Joseph would have needed Israeli permission – or to have been tourists.’"

- Medhi Hasan, 2014

Click here for this poem in shareable text form, plus more reflection, images, & information.

[quotefeeling]

Listen to the wind it talks. Listen to the silence it speaks. Listen to your heart it knows.

Native American Proverb

[bones-ivy-breath]

Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Rezervation by Natalie Diaz

[thehopefulquotes]

Listen to the wind it talks. Listen to the silence it speaks. Listen to your heart it knows.

Native American Proverb

[stay-close]

Listen to the wind it talks. Listen to the silence it speaks. Listen to your heart it knows.

Native American Proverb

[perfectquote]

Listen to the wind it talks. Listen to the silence it speaks. Listen to your heart it knows.

Native American Proverb

[thoughtkick]

Listen to the wind it talks. Listen to the silence it speaks. Listen to your heart it knows.

Native American Proverb