In honor of Native American Heritage Day

After too many broken treaties, it took yet another Act of Congress, in the 21st century, to begin to really recognize treaties. Then came oil and gas pipelines. When will we ever learn?

American Indian Cultural Corridor, Minneapolis

Photo by J. Harrington

Native American Heritage Day: 2009 Congressional Act

SEC. 3. HONORING NATIVE AMERICAN HERITAGE IN THE UNITED STATES.

    Congress encourages the people of the United States, as well as 
Federal, State, and local governments, and interested groups and 
organizations to honor Native Americans, with activities relating to--
            (1) appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities to 
        observe Native American Heritage Day;
            (2) the historical status of Native American tribal 
        governments as well as the present day status of Native 
        Americans;
            (3) the cultures, traditions, and languages of Native 
        Americans; and
            (4) the rich Native American cultural legacy that all 
        Americans enjoy today.

    Approved June 26, 2009.

from the Editors at the Poetry Foundation

Native American Poetry and Culture

A selection of poets, poems, and articles exploring the Native American experience.

discover who's territory you're living on:

Native Land map

A Quest for Universal Suffrage

Kimberly Blaeser

I.

Suffrage:

In late middle English

intercessory prayers,

a series of petitions.

Not the right—but the hope.

 

Universal:

applicable to all cases—

except those marginalized

and unnamed.

A belief, but not a fact.

 

II.

In the trombone slide of history

I hear the suffer in suffragette

the uni uni uni in universal—

each excluded ikwe: women

from five hundred tribal nations

mindimooyenh or matriarchs

of ancient flourishing cultures

still disenfranchised by race,

still holding our world together

in the dusky and lawless violence

manifest in colonial america.

 

Twenty-six million american women

at last granted the right to vote.

Oh, marginal notes in the sweet anthem

of equality, Indigenous non-citizens

turn to the older congress of the sun

seek in the assembled stories of sky

a steady enlightenment—natural laws

(the mathematics of bending trees,

sistering of nutrients—maizebeanssquash,

or wintering wisdom of animal relatives)

each seasonal chorus colored with resilience—

earth voices rising in sacred dream songs.

 

Even now listen, put on the moon-scored

shell of turtle, wear this ancient armour

of belonging. In the spiral of survivance

again harvest the amber sap of trees

follow the scattered path of manoomin

the wild and good seed that grows on water.

Oh water, oh rice, oh women of birch dreams

and baskets, gather. Here reap and reseed

raise brown hands trembling holy with endurance.

Now bead land knowledge into muklaks

sign with the treaty X of exclusion.

Kiss with fingers and lips the inherited

woodland flutes and breathy cedar songs. 

Say yea, eya, and yes. Here and here cast

your tended nets—oh suffered and sweetly mended

nets of abundance. This year and each to follow

choose, not by paper but by pathway, a legacy:

woman’s work—our ageless ballad of continuance.

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