and he loved them for a really long time,
but then he must have got mad at them
because they didn’t speak English or something
so he whispered in the ear of Christopher Columbus
to show the way for White people
who came to claim the land for themselves,
and God said unto them,
“From this day on you shall have dominion over Indians,”
which was kind of the same thing he told Adam
about the animals that creeped and crawled
and so it was
and so it was
and so it was
And God saw that this was good
so when he returned from a paid vacation in Rome
God said, “Let Indians be slaves to the Whites”
and so they were the first slaves to toil in the New World
but then the Whites ran out of Indians
so they imported Black people from far away
and that is all that people would remember
forever and ever, amen
And God knew that this was good
so he told White people to go west and multiply
and he said unto them,
“Let there be colonization,”
and so there was
and from his words sprang colonialism
who begat expansionism
who begat broken treaties
who begat assimilation
who begat disease
who begat wars
who begat genocide
Then one day after he made the dodo extinct
God decided that Indians needed exercise
so he created The Trail of Tears
and then he told the Whites to kill all the buffalo
so that Indians would become vegetarians
and so it was
and so it was
and so it was
After he got over a bad cold or something
God looked around and saw that Whites
were like locusts and they needed more land
to build condos and housing developments,
gas stations and convenience stores,
shopping malls and parking lots,
so he said, “Let there be reservations”
and lo they came into being
and from his words sprang dislocation
who begat racism
who begat poverty
who begat alcoholism
who begat depression
who begat suicide
who begat genocide
And God knew that this was good
so he created the Bureau of Indian Affairs
and land allotments and unscrupulous land embezzlers
and boarding schools where Indian children
were taught to forget what it means to be Indian,
then he created HUD Housing and commodity cheese,
rez dogs and bingo halls, casinos and
The Church of Infinite Confusion
And on the last day God returned from Wal-Mart
and the Mega-Mall and the cineplex
and he saw that Indians were no more upon the land
and he knew that this was a good thing
so he created the Lazy Boy and the remote control
and TV westerns and pay-per-view
and the Washington Redskins and the Cleveland Indians,
and from his comfortable reclining throne
God looked out across the land he had created
and he saw that it was good
and he called it America which means
“Place where Indians once roamed”
and so it was
and so it was
and so it was
After a Sermon at the Church of Infinite Confusion
At ten, Mary Caught-in-Between
came home from sunday school,
told every animal and bird and fish
they couldn’t talk anymore,
told her drum it couldn’t sing anymore,
told her feet they couldn’t dance anymore,
told her words they weren’t words anymore,
told Raven and Coyote they weren’t gods anymore,
said god was a starving white man
with long hair and blue eyes and a beard
who no one loved enough to save
when they nailed him to a totem pole.
The Incomplete & Unauthorized Definition of American Indian Literature
“Indian” is not a derogatory word.
It’s what we call ourselves. We claim it.
Not all Indians wear long black hair
or faded red bandanas.
I’ve never seen a Red Man.
Percentage of people who say they are part Cherokee: 50
Percentage who claim to have a nameless great-grandmother who was a Cherokee princess: 100
Percentage of actual Cherokee princesses in history: 0
Percentage of the Cherokee Nation compared to the number of all other recognized tribes in America: 0.2
Percentage of Americans who are enrolled Indians
according to the U.S. Census Bureau: 0.67
Fiction by Indians outsells poetry by Indians,
yet poetry is the language of sorrow and heartbreak.
All Indians speak poetry,
yet no Indian has won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry.
This is the mathematical formula for deciphering
meaning in Native American poetry:
Where a represents anger and s represents sorrow,
let P represent poetry and t represent the duration
(time) of marginalization (expressed in centuries)
Thus, P = t(a + s)2
Indian writers shouldn’t drive sports cars.
I traded my yellow Porsche for a pick-up truck
with a quarter million miles
and a rifle rack in the rear window.
Not all Indians come from Horse Cultures.
Not all Indians ride horses.
I’ve only been on a horse once and it threw me.
Writing by Indians should contain dogs.
Many Indian writers have had at least
one of their dogs run over by a pick-up truck
with a rifle hanging in the rear window.
History is written by the victors.
Indians didn’t always lose the battles.
Don’t believe everything you’ve ever read
or watched on television.
John Wayne’s real name was Marion, but directors figured
Marion the Cowboy couldn’t believably defeat Indians.
Columbus didn’t really discover America
the way you think he did.
The Navajo Nation is as big as Nebraska.
Bingo is Indian Social Security.
Federal enrollment is how the government
counts Indians to predict when we will become extinct.
Not all Indians are enrolled. I am enrolled.
Enrollment doesn’t mean anything.
There are 500 tribes in America. No individual speaks
for all of them, barely even for a single clan or tribe.
Some bigshot Indian writers think they speak for everyone.
Does an illiterate white shoe salesman in Idaho speak for you?
American universities teach American Indian literature
but hire almost no Indian writers at all.
White professors who have never seen a reservation
teach American Indian literature
even when there’s an Indian writer on faculty
because it’s trendy.
Some Indians go to tribal colleges
Where they are taught by white teachers
who want to be Indian. New-Age white women
have sex with Indian men so they can become Indian.
You can’t become Indian by proximity.
America love
s the Indian-sounding names of places,
but they don’t want Indians to live there.
It gives them a sense of connection to a land
upon which they have little history of their own.
Sometimes a sweat lodge is just a sweat lodge.
Some American sports teams are named for Indians.
There should be an Indian baseball team called
the Cherokee Crucified Christs, complete with
a bleeding team mascot nailed to a wooden cross.
Would that hurt your sensibilities?
All Indians aren’t proud and defiant.
When I do something right, my Indian uncle
tells me I’ve earned an eagle feather.
Only Indians can own eagle feathers.
Nearly all published Indian writing is in English.
Almost no Indian writer speaks their Indian language.
Fewer yet can write in it.
Sii cetsiin koht’aene kenaege’, tsin’aen.
Indian children love to dance Indian-style
but they don’t understand a word the elders sing.
Indian boys love to beat Indian drums
while Indian girls sway in moving circles.
The hearts of Indian boys are tight-stretched drums.
The hearts of Indian girls are beautiful sad songs.
The government decimated bison
so that Indians would become vegetarians.
The government killed wild horses
so that Indian spirits would break.
The government sent Indian children to boarding schools
so they would forget being Indian. Missionaries built
The Church of Infinite Confusion so Indians would
forget being Indian.
I forget what I was trying to say.
British writers don’t have to write about Shakespeare.
French writers don’t have to write about Baudelaire.
Blacks don’t always have to write about slavery.
Indian writers don’t have to write about being Indian
or about dogs killed by trucks with gun racks
on reservations while fancy dancing,
wearing eagle feathers, and beating drums
while mouthing words to songs they do not know.
Many urban Indians write about life on the reservation
even when they’ve never lived on one because it sells better
than writing about going to Starbucks after shopping at the Gap.
Few Indians have Indian-sounding names.
Non-Indians pretending to be Indians
adopt names like “Runs-Beside-Spotted-Ponies,”
“Walks-With-Wolves,” or “Deer Cloud.”
A publisher once asked me to change my name
to a hyphenated one with a preposition and a spirit animal.
I replied, “How about Johnny Fakes-His-Name-on-a-Weasel?”
Audiences at readings by Indians are almost always white.
All Indian writers aren’t spiritually attuned to Nature.
Most are fearful of getting lost in the woods.
Some Indians write out of anger and despair.
All Indian writers aren’t angry and depressed.
Native America is drowning in a sea of alcohol.
Indians commit suicide ten times more often than whites.
Day after day, our hearts are turned into cemeteries.
The impoverished state of our lives is not self-inflicted.
Most Indian writers are mixed-blood
who hate the term “Half-Breed.”
I am the son of a half-breed father.
I am an outcast. Even my shadow
tries to hide its face in shame
Deer on a Snowy Field
When the soldiers come
they start shooting
everyone—women
and the very old,
even our children.
I see them toss babes
into the air for target practice.
We run across a snowy field.
Soldiers on horseback mow us down
with swords and pistols or trample us.
I grab my granddaughter,
clutch her to my chest,
run for a creek bed—
screams and gunshots
and hoof beats behind us.
I pray that we turn into deer.
I run as fast as my old bones
can carry me, and I think,
“This is crazy.
I can’t outrun
bullets and horses.
I’m too old to save anyone.”
But I run anyway,
barefoot in the snow,
carrying the girl, chanting
“Deer, deer. Be a deer.”
My granddaughter,
who sees them gaining
over my shoulder,
whispers in my ear,
“I believe in you, Grandmother.
I believe.”
What the Old Man Said
My children, what they say is true.
They killed my whole tribe,
everyone but me.
for shooting practice.
They set the world afire;
even the stars burned.
My children, when you see them coming,
run away and don’t look back.
Keep running.
Keep running.
Run.
An American Indian Dreams the American Dream
Silas Carries-a-Dream sat on his porch
reading newspaper want ads looking for a job
He imagined what it would be like
to go to work
to wear a suit and tie
new shoes
carry a brief case
punch a clock
sit in a cubicle
have a portfolio
stock options
take power lunches
drink martinis
get an ulcer
get depressed
and jump from the twenty-seventh floor
on a Monday morning
When he was done
Silas crumpled the paper into a fist
and sent it rolling across the desert
like a tumbleweed
Dream Walker
Silas Carries-a-Dream was spinning
the hoop of his young dreams with a stick
along a crumbled edge of highway—
heat waves melting the uncertain road ahead.
It was a good dream as dreams go.
He was rolling his dreams
rolling his dreams
toward a dark and crumbling horizon.
Kite Runners
Marty and Luther Sitting Bear
build kites from broken boughs of a piñon tree
cover them with pieces of cloth
cut from their grandmother’s old Sunday dress,
make tails out of red, white, and blue bandanas
then run as fast as they can into the desert wind—
their hopeful dreams flying
on and on and on
on and on and on
How to Make Blue Ribbon Indian Fry Bread
“Indians could spend their whole lives
looking for the perfect piece of fry bread.”
—Sherman Alexie, Reservation Blues
In a large bowl, mix the following ingredients:
Three cups of flour made from the ashes
of failed Indian dreams
One cup of water made from the tears of Indian mothers
A pinch of salt, first thrown into open wounds
of Indian fathers
Drop the rolled and molded dough into a pan of oil
hot enough to incinerate every Indian future
Remove when both sides turn brown and blistered
The Alte
rnate History of the United States of America
Lester Has-Some-Books builds a time machine
in his uncle’s garage and sets it to the day
Columbus discovers America.
Quickly, with the masts of three ships
lurching on the horizon, he sets up a big sign
on the beach:
WELCOME TO SPAIN!
Columbus spies the sign from the bay,
scratches his head, and orders all three ships
to turn around and head back out to sea.
Thing You Didn’t Know About American History #138
for Howard Zinn
Shortly after an adulterous winter of wife-swapping,
and after murdering a neighboring Indian tribe
in cold blood—
every man, woman, and child
while asleep in their beds—
the Pilgrims outlawed Christmas for decades,
making it illegal to celebrate the birth of Christ.