Week Four #readNDN #2sDayPoems

Tags

#readNDN, #readwomen, Bad Indians, California Indians, Chumash, Deborah A Miranda, Essenlen, Gloria Bird, Greenfield Review Press, guest post, Indian Cartography, Native American Heritage Month, Native American Women's Poetry, prose poems, Reinventing the Enemy's Language, Spokane, Stories I Tell My Daughter, The River of History, Trask House Press, What We Owe, women poets

So sad to be wrapping up this special Native American Heritage Month series of #2sDayPoems. I hope you have enjoyed it as much as I have, but even more importantly, I hope that you have found some NDN poets you really love. Feel free to write a guest blog post if you did!!

I love to hear from you fabulous readers. The poetry community is more fun as it grows!

Ok, enough on that tangent.  Here’s today’s poets:

Deborah Miranda (Esselen/Chumash) has written a fascinating “tribal memoir” about her own Esselen family group and California Indians in general, titled Bad Indians that I recommended in another post. She also has several collections of poetry out.  The one that I find myself returning to is Indian Cartography (Greenfield Review Press, 1998).

“Stories I Tell my Daughter” is one of my favorite poems from the book. She also blogs at–you guessed it –Bad NDNS on blogspot.

 

Poet and critic Gloria Bird (Spokane) released a powerful collection of prose poems called The River of History (Trask House Press) in the late nineties. Today’s poem  “What We Owe” is from that work.

Another interesting read is Reinventing the Enemy’s Language: Contemporary Native Women’s Writings of North of America, which she co-edited with Joy Harjo.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cowboys& Indians (Longmire Rant/2sDay Poems)

Tags

2sDay Poems, aboriginal studies, Bad Indians, Bad NDN, Cowboy crime drama, Craig Johnson, David Midthunder, Deborah A Miranda, Gary Farmer, I Am Not a Witness, Indian Cartography, Irene Bedard, June Jourdan, Kimberley Guerrero, LongLiveLongmire, Longmire, Marcus Red Thunder, Nathaniel Arcand, Native American actors, Native Americans in television, Ryan Red Corn, Zahn McClarnon

Ever since A&E announced that it was dropping its cowboy crime drama (the audience was too skewed towards older folks, bad for advertisers, they said) Longmire fans have been lighting up twitter with the #LongLiveLongmire campaign in hopes of attracting a new home for the program.

Based on Craig Johnson’s popular mystery novels, the show is one of few on television that not only features Native American faces, but gives the actors juicy roles. And with the advice of consultant Marcus Red Thunder, close friend of Johnson’s and the inspiration for the fictional Henry Standing Bear character, the program has plowed forward with some hot-button Native American issues, and done so in style.

Besides its regular Native talent ( I see you drooling over Zahn McClarnon’s long, gorgeous hair) there is a host of smaller roles that have seen the likes of Native Americans David Midthunder, Irene Bedard, Nathaniel Arcand, Gary Farmer and Kimberley Guerrero, for starters.

With networks clamoring for diversity, why hasn’t this perfect storm been picked up already?? I mean, this is the total package, people!!  Great writing, a whole crop of Bad NDN’s, and a stellar group of non-Native actors (one of which is a SciFy phenom). Not to mention 6 million fans captured and held in the SUMMER, when viewing drops in the face of other distractions.

We need more stories and poems and shows that bring us all the beauty of our many tribal nations, not less.

And speaking of poetry, I first wanted to share this quote from activist/poet/social commentator June Jordan, in which she urges us to understand that:

Poetry means taking control of the language of your life

and exploring it without bounds to its very limits.

And so, in that vein, let’s explore some of the voices from Indian Country, who are doing just that. Here is Ryan Red Corn‘s ” Bad Indians“:

For more on the text and its many allusions, see this writeup on the poem as part of an aboriginal studies curriculum.

 

Next up is Deborah Miranda‘s moving “I Am Not a Witness”, which begins:

I found Coyote, Eagle, and Momoy
in a book, but cannot read
the Chumash words. I found
photographs of bedrock slabs pocked by
hundreds of acorn-grinding holes,
but the holes are empty, the stone
pestles that would curve to my grip
lie dead behind museum glass.
Mountains and rivers and oaks rise
in Spanish accents: San Gabriel,
Santa Ynez, Robles.
These are not real names.

Some of our bones rest in 4000 graves
out back behind the Mission.
Some of our bones are mixed into…

FULL TEXT HERE

From Indian Cartography (Greenfield Review Press)