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
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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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