Ephemeral spring

Wind is down. Temperature is up. Cloud cover is back. I’m sitting, looking out the window, grateful the house feels warmer, and fantasizing about spring ephemerals and fly fishing. I’m also wondering how many times this year spring will come, and go. Beginning tomorrow and for the rest of the month, daytime highs are forecast to reach above freezing. What do we call a January thaw that runs into February?

thaw-freeze cycles = icicles

Photo by J. Harrington

I doubt we’ve seen the end of winter, even with an extended thaw. We’ll probably get a seesaw pattern of cold and snow, melting, cold and snow, melting, lasting through April, maybe into May, despite NOAA’s seasonal outlook of "leaning above" temperatures and equal chances of above or below normal precipitation.

Personally, I’m on either a seesaw or a rollercoaster between looking forward to seasonal change milestones, such as arriving waterfowl, and anticipating what aberrant weather / climactic pattern will develop next. At least there’s a stack of books to read and a supply of coffee for drinking if we have to deal with weather extremes. For now, I plan on starting longer walks with the dogs as long as the temperatures stay above freezing. At least one of the three of us really needs the exercise.

Ephemeral Stream

Elizabeth Willis

This is the way water 
thinks about the desert.
The way the thought of water 
gives you something 
to stumble on. A ghost river.
A sentence trailing off
toward lower ground.
A finger pointing
at the rest of the show.

I wanted to read it. 
I wanted to write a poem 
and call it "Ephemeral Stream"
because you made of this 
imaginary creek
a hole so deep 
it looked like a green eye 
taking in the storm, 
a poem interrupted 
by forgiveness.

It's not over yet.
A dream can spend 
all night fighting off 
the morning. Let me
start again. A stream 
may be a branch or a beck, 
a crick or kill or lick,
a syke, a runnel. It pours 
through a corridor. The door 
is open. The keys
are on the dashboard. 

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REMEMBER

Today is Native American Heritage Day. November is Native American Heritage Month. In Minnesota, Native American Heritage is acknowledged in and through:

• Native Governance Center, "a Native-led nonprofit dedicated to assisting Native nations in strengthening their governance systems and capacity to exercise sovereignty.”
• Why Treaties Matter
• Teaching Native American History and Culture (Minnesota Historical Society)
• Indian Affairs Council
• American Indian Cultural Corridor (Minneapolis)

American Indian Cultural Corridor Minneapolis

Photo by J. Harrington

The linked resources above include additional resources that can help US learn about and honor our diversity while acknowledging the high and low points of our histories and conflicts.

Remember

Joy Harjo
1951 – 

Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.

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Becoming native to a place

Tomorrow is Indigenous Peoples’ Day. If I’ve read my history correctly, settlement of the “New World” by European colonists was largely justified by the Doctrine of Discovery. Earlier this year, that doctrine was repudiated by the Vatican. A case of too little, too late, but better late than never.

American Indian Cultural Corridor, Minneapolis

Photo by J. Harrington

As the Democrats and Republicans battle for the soul of the US, it is a good time to realize or remember that many of the concepts in the US Constitution are indebted to and derived from the Iroquois Confederacy. In fact, these are times when we should refresh our knowledge of how the country came into existence. One way to do that is to read Heather Cox Richardson’s Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America.

Along with that, if you haven’t yet, you probably will want to read Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass, in which she points out that

“For all of us, becoming indigenous to a place means living as if your children's future mattered, to take care of the land as if our lives, both material and spiritual, depended on it.”

― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass 

Another way to honor and celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day is to

Remember

by Joy Harjo

Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.

********************************************
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Please be kind to each other while you can.

Returning to flow state

We dodged several bullets yesterday, almost literally. There were thunderstorms all around us and we were caught, briefly, in a torrential downpour, but we avoided, through pure luck or something, the hail that shattered windshields and dented sheet metal elsewhere in the Twin Cities area. Strangely enough, we also had a brief dry spell while we picked up our CSA share box and again later while we were unloading bags and boxes of items for a yard sale. It looks as though I’m going to have to forego my “poor me” complaints for at least a week or two.

Upon arrival home, the mail contained a package of pamphlets from the Order of Bards, Ovates & Druids, including several on the role of water in Celtic and Druid spirituality. Those nicely complement the Kimberly Blaeser paper I’m currently reading, A Cosmology of Nibi. I’m more and more delighted by the correspondence I find between Celtic and Native American cultures. The likelihood that what passes for culture in colonial America will ever give earth and water and air the respect they deserve is not great, but I keep hoping to find ways to move the needle in the right direction. I think that’s something elders are supposed to do, isn’t it?

(upper) Kinnickinnic River

Photo by J. Harrington

As long as we’re on the theme of moving needles, I want to share a recently distributed notice from the Twin Cities chapter of Trout Unlimited, of which I’m a long time member, that may be of interest.

Regular newsletter readers are aware that we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to remove two dams on the Kinnickinnic River, an iconic trout stream that is the home water for much of our membership.  This year, the US Army Corps of Engineers is conducting a feasibility study on the removal of the dams and restoration of the river corridor.  This feasibility study is the first big step in developing a firm plan for the restoration of the river, and can bring up to $10 million in federal funding to the project. TCTU members have provided critical seed money to get this project going.  
The Corps will be hosting an open house on Tuesday August 15th from 6 pm to 8 pm at the River Falls Public Library.  Corps officials will provide a detailed overview of the feasibility study, and welcome the public to join and provide comment. River Falls City Officials will also be present.  The Corps' press release announcing the Open House is here.
This is a great opportunity for us to show our support for the restoration, provide comments, and get our questions answered.  I plan to attend, and I hope that you can join, too! A strong contingent of TU members at this meeting will demonstrate to the Corps and the City just how important this project is to us.
If you would like to read more about the Kinni Restoration project, please check out this page on our website. 

It is a very pleasant surprise to find the Corps actively engaged in river restoration as well as their normal efforts at river industrialization. We look forward to a positive outcome of the feasibility study and, ultimately, the removal of two dams in River Falls. We’ll check for press coverage late next week and will post here anything we find.

Navigation

Jeanetta Calhoun Mish

Nervous-system tracings of rivers before dams—
to map watercourses is to diagram human hands
running in fingers to deltas. Neosho, Kaw,
Cimarron, Verdigris, Arkansas, Chickaskia.
Flood flow in spring, summer languid. Call
their names—conjure those whose language
they carry. Memory exists in nerves, lives in
rivers like silver-scaled great-horned serpent,
basilisk who admonishes our failures. Metaphor
reminds us that humans subsisted along rivers
immemorial. Recall, then, those dead metaphors,
breathe them back to life—river of time, river
of memory, river of life, river of blood, river of
song, river of death. River of contempt. Not the
same river, not the same woman—Heraclitus’
axiom along cattail-encumbered bank. Honor
rivers’ meanders, their currents our late-night
reveries that roar, crawl along, rush downstream,
and overflow, leaving mica scales behind. How
rivers sometimes get lost. How we all get lost.

********************************************
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Becoming native to this place

Today’s title borrows from Wes Jackson. Today is International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples. Yesterday, the voters in Ohio chose self-determination, for women and men, over autocracy. Kimberly Blaeser seems to have anticipated such a combination of events in a poem she wrote several years ago. Her words exceed any ability of mine to honor those who must continue the battles to control their own bodies and lands. (Some years back I had the pleasure of participating in a poetry class she taught at the Aldo Leopold Foundation.)

American Indian Cultural Corridor, Minneapollis

Photo by J. Harrington

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.

Copyright © 2020 Kimberly Blaeser. This poem was co-commissioned by the Academy of American Poets and the New York Philharmonic as part of the Project 19 initiative.

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Damn dams, don’t damn fisheries!

 I think I’ve mentioned that I’m a Trout Unlimited member involved in fundraising and related efforts in support of removing two dams on the Kinnickinnic River in River Falls, WI. Much background on that effort can be found at the Kinni Corridor Collaborative web site.

part of Kinnickinnic River restoration

Photo by J. Harrington

Although restoration of a free-flowing Kinni is important, I don’t believe there are threatened or endangered species involved, unlike a situation involving Atlantic salmon in Maine, back in my native New England. In a message I recently received, Trout Unlimited asked:

Did you know that wild Atlantic salmon are on the brink of extinction in U.S. waters? Salmon once returned to rivers from Connecticut through Maine by the hundreds of thousands. Today, fewer than 1,000 salmon return to just a few rivers in Maine.

Our best chance to save this majestic species is to remove four aging dams on the Kennebec River. Right now, federal agencies are weighing that very question, providing what is likely our last opportunity to restore a self-sustaining run of Atlantic salmon (and other important migratory species) to the Kennebec watershed.

Please join TU in urging federal fisheries officials to save our salmon by decommissioning those dams and allowing the lower Kennebec River to flow free to the sea once again.

Learn more

More and more research is supporting the physical and mental health benefits of fishing. To attain those benefits, folks need someplace to go fishing. The Kinni offers the prospect of adding miles of Class 1 trout water in a city in a large metropolitan area, the Twin Cities. Among most fly fishers, Atlantic salmon are a prized quarry. Let’s not find ourselves bemoaning the truth of Joni Mitchell’s lyrics:

Don't it always seem to go 
That you don't know what you've got 
Till it's gone 

Elegy ["I think by now the river must be thick"]

By Natasha Trethewey

For my father

I think by now the river must be thick

        with salmon. Late August, I imagine it

as it was that morning: drizzle needling

        the surface, mist at the banks like a net

settling around us — everything damp

        and shining. That morning, awkward

and heavy in our hip waders, we stalked

        into the current and found our places —

you upstream a few yards and out

        far deeper. You must remember how

the river seeped in over your boots

        and you grew heavier with that defeat.

All day I kept turning to watch you, how

        first you mimed our guide's casting

then cast your invisible line, slicing the sky

        between us; and later, rod in hand, how

you tried — again and again — to find

        that perfect arc, flight of an insect

skimming the river's surface. Perhaps

        you recall I cast my line and reeled in

two small trout we could not keep.

        Because I had to release them, I confess,

I thought about the past — working

        the hooks loose, the fish writhing

in my hands, each one slipping away

        before I could let go. I can tell you now

that I tried to take it all in, record it

        for an elegy I'd write — one day —

when the time came. Your daughter,

        I was that ruthless. What does it matter

if I tell you I learned to be? You kept casting

        your line, and when it did not come back

empty, it was tangled with mine. Some nights,

        dreaming, I step again into the small boat

that carried us out and watch the bank receding —

        my back to where I know we are headed. 

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Wanna help restore a local river, the Kinnickinnic?

I hope everyone is enjoying sunshine, blue skies and above average temperatures at least as much as I am. Today we finished the paperwork on our 2022 taxes, so that’s done. We visited one of our favorite independent book stores this morning and I proved sometimes I can behave myself. I still have a stack of books from Christmas that I haven’t read so no additions to that stack today.

Valentine’s cards and gifts are, I think, taken care of. Tomorrow we’ll visit our son for awhile. For a change, I’m feeling as if I might be holding my own. We’ll see come Wednesday morning if I’ve been too optimistic. Meanwhile, I’m going to enjoy watching snow and ice melt and flow away.

Last night’s clear sky allowed viewing some stars, which I hadn’t done for some time. The fact that the moon is no longer as bright and full as it was helped, although it was bright and beautiful in this morning’s sky.

Kinnickinnic upstream of River Falls

Photo by J. Harrington

For the past year or so, I’ve been involved with the Twin Cities chapter of Trout Unlimited helping to raise funds to restore the Kinnickinnic River from River Falls downstream by first determining the feasibility of getting Corps of Engineers funding to facilitate removal of two dams and then undertaking restoration of the river and its environments at the former impoundments and downstream toward the St. Croix. The latest chapter newsletter has a story by the chapter president with links to some recent articles explaining what’s involved and an invitation to participate in a silent auction fund raiser. Please take a look at the excerpt below and consider bidding or making a donation.

This is a big year for the Kinni. You may have read about the progress we have made in removing the dams and restoring the riparian corridor in Trout Magazine and Fly Fisherman. Locally, the River Falls Reader featured an in-depth article in January .

Last summer, the Wisconsin DNR made a $1 million award for the Kinni dam removal. This spring, the US Army Corps of Engineers (COE) will commence a feasibility study that could unlock an additional $10 million in federal funding. Donations by TCTU members in 2022 provided critical seed money to obtain the WI DNR grant and to get the COE feasibility study going. We have a bit more money to raise to support the feasibility study and we hope to finish by the time the Spring Caddis hatch starts! 

You can help by:

• Making a donation by credit card or check.

• Participating in our Silent Auction. We are offering a limited number of items contributed by TU members who care deeply about the Kinni. The auction is live now, and will end on March 15th.

• Attending the River Falls Fly Fishing Film Festival on March 3rd. Tickets are available here. A share of the proceeds will help fund the feasibility study.

If you are interested in more information on the Kinni, please check out the Kinni pageof our website. This is a once in a generation opportunity to restore an iconic trout stream in our backyard, and I appreciate your support!

 Last year ArtReach St. Croix published a chapbook of poems by local poets of the St. Croix valley. If you follow the preceding link and scroll to page number 20 [not the 20th  page], you’ll find today’s poem. It’s about a trip down the Kinni.

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Pieces of women’s history for today

 In addition to being the day after Thanksgiving (Bye, Nothing Day), today is also Women’s Merry Making Day and Native American Heritage Day. I can think of no better way to honor all of those themes than to share Joy Harjo’s signature project as poet laureate, Living Nations, Living Words. 

I hope you follow the link and enjoy her work as much  as I do. As she wrote:

We understand poetry to be a living language—whether it is in our tribal languages, or in English, or another language. We use poetry to mark transformations, as in love letters, elegies, or epithalamium. Poetry can be useful for praise and even to help deter a storm. Or poetry is a tool to uncover the miraculous in the ordinary.

American Indian Cultural Corridor

Photo by J. Harrington

From the “Living”  collection, Louise Erdrich’s poem fits the day and the times really well

Advice to Myself

by Louise Erdrich

Leave the dishes.
Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don’t patch the cup.
Don’t patch anything. Don’t mend. Buy safety pins.
Don’t even sew on a button.
Let the wind have its way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don’t keep all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll’s tiny shoes in pairs, don’t worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic-decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don’t even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.
Don’t sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we’re all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don’t answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in through the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don’t read it, don’t read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.

********************************************
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T minus 3 and counting

Blue skies, sunshine, temperature above freezing. I am truly grateful for each of them, especially the above freezing part. It’s supposed to continue for another week or so. 🥰

Another source of impending gratitude: our local PBS station’s (TPT) broadcast tomorrow night of the Buffy Sainte-Marie documentary, Carry It On. (I am feeling considerably less grateful for the design of the American Masters web site.) Watching the broadcast will help me relive my (mildly?) misspent youth during the era between the beatniks and the hippies. And, it’s being broadcast during Native American Heritage Month and just a few days before Native American Heritage Day.

American Indian Cultural Corridor, Minneapolis (2013)

Photo by J. Harrington

Since POTUS 46 recently turned 80, it’s as good time as any to say I’m grateful he’s so much more capable, and much less destructive, than POTUS 45, and that I hope he has a very successful two more years as President.

I’m also grateful that the Winter Solstice is a month away. Shortly after we celebrate that, the days will start getting longer again.

In a “funny” way I’m grateful that the Musk creature purchased Twitter. It’s causing me to seriously think about what better uses of my time there are than doom scrolling. I’m not sure I can limit my  screen scream time, so I may have to just quit. Instead, I can scare the hell out of myself by reading the daily headlines on slashdot, for example:

• US Government Begins Researching 'Climate Intervention’ Geoengineering
• Debate at COP27: Nuclear Energy, Climate Friend or Foe?

In anticipation of the Buffy Sainte-Marie broadcast, and in gratitude for, and recognition of,  the importance of her lyrics, today's poem is Buffy Sainte-Marie’s:

Universal Soldier

By Buffy Sainte-Marie

He's five feet two and he's six feet four
He fights with missiles and with spears
He's all of 31 and he's only 17
He's been a soldier for a thousand years

He's a Catholic, a Hindu, an athiest, a Jain,
a Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew
and he knows he shouldn't kill 
and he knows he always will
kill you for me my friend and me for you

And he's fighting for Canada, 
he's fighting for France,
he's fighting for the USA,
and he's fighting for the Russians 
and he's fighting for Japan, 
and he thinks we'll put an end to war this way

And he's fighting for Democracy
and fighting for the Reds
He says it's for the peace of all
He's the one who must decide 
who's to live and who's to die
and he never sees the writing on the walls

But without him how would Hitler have 
condemned him at Dachau
Without him Caesar would have stood alone
He's the one who gives his body 
as a weapon to a war
and without him all this killing can't go on

He's the universal soldier and he 
really is to blame
His orders come from far away no more
They come from him, and you, and me
and brothers can't you see
this is not the way we put an end to war

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Honoring Native American Heritage

 November is National American Indian Heritage Month

Celebrate Native American Heritage Month with Twin Cities PBS

Native American Heritage Month - Meet Minneapolis

Bdote Memory Map

Why Treaties Matter

Honor the Earth

The Honorable Harvest
(Braiding Sweetgrass)

American Indian Cultural Corridor

Photo by J. Harrington

Once The World Was Perfect

by Joy Harjo

Once the world was perfect, and we were happy in that world.
Then we took it for granted.
Discontent began a small rumble in the earthly mind.
Then Doubt pushed through with its spiked head.
And once Doubt ruptured the web,
All manner of demon thoughts
Jumped through—
We destroyed the world we had been given
For inspiration, for life—
Each stone of jealousy, each stone
Of fear, greed, envy, and hatred, put out the light.
No one was without a stone in his or her hand.
There we were,
Right back where we had started.
We were bumping into each other
In the dark.
And now we had no place to live, since we didn’t know
How to live with each other.
Then one of the stumbling ones took pity on another
And shared a blanket.
A spark of kindness made a light.
The light made an opening in the darkness.
Everyone worked together to make a ladder.
A Wind Clan person climbed out first into the next world,
And then the other clans, the children of those clans, their children,
And their children, all the way through time—
To now, into this morning light to you.

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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.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

In honor of Indigenous Peoples’ Day 2021

In honor of Indigenous Peoples’ Day, and in recognition of the contributions to the cultures of North America made by many Native Americans, I strongly recommend you lay your hands and eyes on a copy of one or more of these books, and read it / them. I’ve read each, enjoyed the readings and am the better for it.

American Indian Cultural Corridor, Franklin Ave. Minneapolis

Photo by J. Harrington

First, edited by Joy Harjo, the current United States poet laureate, is A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry, When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through. Next, this time by Joy Harjo the poet, How We Became Human, New and Selected Poems, 1975 — 2001.

Heid Erdrich is, by birthplace, a native Minnesotan. She is a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe. In addition to her own volumes of poetry, she edited the volume New Poets of Native Nations, which includes, inter alia, several poems by Minnesota’s recently appointed Native American poet laureate, Gwen Nell Westerman, who is also co-author of Mni Sota Makoce, the Land of the Dakota.

Our final recommendation, for today, is the volume Ojibwe, Waasa Inaabidaa, We Look in All Directions, by Thomas Peacock and Marlene Wisuri.

De Wakpa Taŋka Odowaŋ / Song for the Mississippi River

By Gwen Nell Westerman

20 September 2018

 

Long before Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man.
            Before Ol’ Man River.
            Before Wade in the Water.
Long before Schoolcraft and verItascaput.
            Before Father Hennepin and St. Anthony,
            Before Misi Ziibi.
Long before Hernando de Soto.
Otakaheya
In the beginning,
De Dakota Makoce
This was a Dakota place.
The water was pure.
The water was wakaŋ.
Sacred.
mni
pejuta tokaheya heca.
Water was
Water is
our first medicine.
The water was part of the land.
And therefore part of the people.
And in this place,
We flourished.
From Bdote,
where the Mni Sota Wakpa joins
the Wakpa Taŋka,
We followed the rivers,
interconnected waterways,
interconnected lifeways,
Itokaġa
southward to ḢeMniCaŋ and
Bde Iṡtamni, the “Lake of Tears.”
Waziyata
Northward the Big River
took us to Owamniyomni
the whirlpool created by ḢaḢa Wakpa
the curling waters of the falls.
We knew the river’s rise and fall,
channels and gorges,
every meander, every floodplain,
from Bde Wakaŋ to Mniti
Mille Lacs to the Lake of the Woods,
Rainy Lake to Thunder Bay,
where our burial mounds remain.
Wiyoḣpeyata
Westward to Saskatchewan
the head of the Churchill River,
along the Ballantyne River,
named Puatsipi by the Cree—
            Dakota River.
To Bdote, the beginning
of the Mississippi of the North
and the Little Minnesota.
These were our waterways
and our lifeways.
Our medicine.
And we, too, want to sing
a song for the water,
a song for wakpa taŋka
so we listen
we listen
listen
and then
on the edge of a dream
the songs come.
Condensed from the fog
Like dewdrops on cattails,
They form perfectly clear.
Whispering through leaves,
heavy voices rise up,
drift beyond night
toward the silent dawn,
and sing.
            Hekta ehaŋna ded uŋtipi.
            Heuŋ he ohiŋni uŋkiksuyapi kte.
            Aŋpetu dena ded uŋtipi.
            Heca ohiŋni uŋdowaŋpi kte.
            Mni
            Mni pejuta
            Mni wiconi
            Mni wakaŋ
Always on still morning air,
they come,
connected by
memories
connected by
water.

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It's Native American Heritage Day

Today is Native American Heritage Day. In lieu of a normal posting, we ask that you follow the link below and read Sara Sinclair's entire article titled:

Indian country showed up to beat Trump. How can you show up for Indian country?

We are going to Buy Nothing today and are going to #OptOutside and try to follow 

have you visited the American Indian Cultural Corridor?

Photo by J. Harrington

 

A Map to the Next World

By Joy Harjo 

     for Desiray Kierra Chee

In the last days of the fourth world I wished to make a map for

those who would climb through the hole in the sky.

My only tools were the desires of humans as they emerged

from the killing fields, from the bedrooms and the kitchens.

For the soul is a wanderer with many hands and feet.

The map must be of sand and can’t be read by ordinary light. It

must carry fire to the next tribal town, for renewal of spirit.

In the legend are instructions on the language of the land, how it

was we forgot to acknowledge the gift, as if we were not in it or of it.

Take note of the proliferation of supermarkets and malls, the

altars of money. They best describe the detour from grace.

Keep track of the errors of our forgetfulness; the fog steals our

children while we sleep.

Flowers of rage spring up in the depression. Monsters are born

there of nuclear anger.

Trees of ashes wave good-bye to good-bye and the map appears to

disappear.

We no longer know the names of the birds here, how to speak to

them by their personal names.

Once we knew everything in this lush promise.

What I am telling you is real and is printed in a warning on the

map. Our forgetfulness stalks us, walks the earth behind us, leav-

ing a trail of paper diapers, needles, and wasted blood.

An imperfect map will have to do, little one.

The place of entry is the sea of your mother’s blood, your father’s

small death as he longs to know himself in another.

There is no exit.

The map can be interpreted through the wall of the intestine—a

spiral on the road of knowledge.

You will travel through the membrane of death, smell cooking

from the encampment where our relatives make a feast of fresh

deer meat and corn soup, in the Milky Way.

They have never left us; we abandoned them for science.

And when you take your next breath as we enter the fifth world

there will be no X, no guidebook with words you can carry.

You will have to navigate by your mother’s voice, renew the song

she is singing.

Fresh courage glimmers from planets.

And lights the map printed with the blood of history, a map you

will have to know by your intention, by the language of suns.

When you emerge note the tracks of the monster slayers where they

entered the cities of artificial light and killed what was killing us.

You will see red cliffs. They are the heart, contain the ladder.

A white deer will greet you when the last human climbs from the

destruction.

Remember the hole of shame marking the act of abandoning our

tribal grounds.

We were never perfect.

Yet, the journey we make together is perfect on this earth who was

once a star and made the same mistakes as humans.

We might make them again, she said.

Crucial to finding the way is this: there is no beginning or end.

You must make your own map.

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Which Native American should be Biden's Interior Secretary?

We wish we could claim this idea originated with us, but, alas... we saw it first on Twitter.

"I want a Native American to be named Secretary of the Interior." 

It seems like a wonderful idea that's long overdue. If ever there was a time when we needed Traditional Ecological Knowledge applied to our public lands, it's now. We need to address climate breakdown and adaptation to its impacts, restoration of indigenous food systems and languages, actually honoring treaties rather than providing lip service. I can think of several Native Americans who deserve consideration as Interior Secretary. Not doubt there are others. Should we submit names to the Biden Transition Team? Is this an appropriate way to honor Native American Heritage Month this year? Do you have any thoughts to share (in the comments)?

wolf sculpture, American Indian Corridor, Minneapolis

Photo by J. Harrington

This country has the precedent of having had a Native American, Charles Curtis, as a Republican Vice President. There's lots of reasons why having a Native American Interior Secretary makes sense these days. Some background can be found here. The names suggested don't include Honor the Earth's co-founder, Winona LaDuke, who has been a nominee for Vice President of the United States as the candidate of the Green Party. It's unclear how the progressive wing of the Democrats might respond to being "out-Greened."

There's an interesting article in The American Prospect: Corporate Democrats Are Rural America’s Biggest Losers. Mainstream Democrats are becoming more and more identified with supporting corporate interests over those of the working and middle class. Wouldn't it be wonderful if one of tRUMP's legacies turns out to be the return of Democrats to farmers, laborers, and Native American patriots as well as neoliberal, global, corporatists. Something, something, something BIG TENT!

The Theft Outright

By Heid E. Erdrich

      after Frost

We were the land's before we were.

Or the land was ours before you were a land.

Or this land was our land, it was not your land.

We were the land before we were people,

loamy roamers rising, so the stories go,

or formed of clay, spit into with breath reeking soul—

What's America, but the legend of Rock 'n' Roll?

Red rocks, blood clots bearing boys, blood sands

swimming being from women's hands, we originate,

originally, spontaneous as hemorrhage.

Un-possessing of what we still are possessed by,

possessed by what we now no more possess.

We were the land before we were people,

dreamy sunbeams where sun don't shine, so the stories go,

or pulled up a hole, clawing past ants and roots—

Dineh in documentaries scoff DNA evidence off.

They landed late, but canyons spoke them home.

Nomadic Turkish horse tribes they don't know.

What's America, but the legend of Stop 'n' Go?

Could be cousins, left on the land bridge,

contrary to popular belief, that was a two-way toll.

In any case we'd claim them, give them some place to stay.

Such as we were we gave most things outright

(the deed of the theft was many deeds and leases and claim stakes

and tenure disputes and moved plat markers stolen still today . . .)

We were the land before we were a people,

earthdivers, her darling mudpuppies, so the stories go,

or emerging, fully forming from flesh of earth—

The land, not the least vaguely, realizing in all four directions,

still storied, art-filled, fully enhanced.

Such as she is, such as she wills us to become.

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Come November has arrived

Welcome to November. We're getting closer to having survived 2020. Two months to go, t-shirts and trinkets are already available. But enough of this silliness.

November is National American Indian Heritage Month. Other informative web sites include:

• Native News Online
• US Census Bureau
• US Courts 
• White House Proclamation

American Indian Cultural Corridor, Minneapolis

Photo by J. Harrington

Locally, we would suggest a visit to Birchbark Books, but they're online and phone orders only due to COVID-19. You might take a look at Minneapolis' American Indian Cultural Corridor on Franklin Avenue. The Minnesota Humanities Center hosts the bdote memory map while the Historical Society has information on both the Dakota and the Ojibwe peoples. There's also an Ojibwe People's Dictionary. 

This year Joy Harjo, our current Poet Laureate, has finished editing and Norton has published "When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through -- an anthology of poetry from more than 160 poets, representing close to 100 indigenous nations." We're almost halfway through our copy and have enjoyed every page so far. 

On our own home front, we did remember to put out two saucers of milk last night for any Cat Sith that came by. One saucer was empty this morning. The other only half gone. We hope that means no Cat Sith curse on our home and family this year. Last night was also the continuance of no trick or treaters in the quarter century or so that we've lived here. Looks like once again someone will have to volunteer to do something about the undistributed candy.

Remember

Joy Harjo - 1951-

Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star's stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun's birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother's, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.

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