“Yes, my friend.
You won everything, everything.”
Indian Time Machine
Lester Has-Some-Books
invents a time machine in his sweat lodge.
So, he sets it back to Little Bighorn
with a video camera and tapes everything.
Then he invites the whole damn reservation to watch
the movie. Everyone’s eating popcorn and laughing.
It’s really something. You should see it.
Everything’s in color and there are these close-ups.
Here’s the part where Custer sends in the cavalry
catching the Indians off guard.
Oh, and here’s where three thousand Indians
chase them up a hill and whups their ass.
Betrayal
Judas Points-Him-Out
was one of the Crow scouts
that led Custer’s 7th Cavalry
to the Indian encampment
at Little Bighorn.
He was paid thirty silver dollars.
With a name like that
seems like someone
should have seen it coming.
If Evel Knievel Were Indian
he would jump twenty-three semi-trailers
full of government commodity cheese
in a souped-up Indian motorcycle painted red.
He would line up every white guy who ever
played an Indian in a John Wayne western
and jump them all with his eyes closed
while twirling a sparkler in one hand.
If Evel Knievel were Indian
he would start at the moon
and pick up enough speed to soar
over every reservation—
a red and chrome meteor with its tires aflame.
Cowboys & Indians #2
—at a steakhouse outside Missoula, Montana
with James Welch
Silas Redcorn walked into a steak house
in the middle of cowboy country
wearing cowboy boots and a tee-shirt
with Indian Pride embroidered on the front.
While he waited for a waitress
who ignored his existence
all them cowboys glared at him
from beneath wide-brimmed hats
black as storm clouds,
their sharp tongues coiled like barbed wire.
The Triumphant Conversion of Mary Caught-in-Between
For many years, priests
at The Church of Infinite Confusion
tried to put the Fear of God
into little Mary Caught-in-Between.
It must have worked.
Come Sunday, she was always terrified
to walk through the chapel doors.
Our Lady of Sorrows
Every Sunday during Mass
Joseph Little Bear scrubbed the floors
and toilets of Our Lady of Sorrows
until his palms bled and no one
helped him to drag his cross
Fahrenheit
Sally Two Trees stood outside as the first snowflakes of winter
began
to fall.
She tried to catch them in her hands and on her tongue—
each one a dream:
a good job
a nice home
a college degree
a car that didn’t burn oil
sobriety for her and her baby.
But every time Sally reached out to grasp one
the dream melted in her hand.
The Dead Are Lonely
Ever since Victor Lone Fight killed himself
with the sharp edge of a poem
all that remains of him is gray ash
spread across the reservation
on its dusty roads
in the dough of fry bread
in the braids of Indian women
in the ribcages of dead dogs
Intermission
We now interrupt your poetry reading pleasure
to debunk the myth of George Washington
as the stalwart archetype of American morality.
(Warning! This poem is dangerous.)
“You are hereby ordered to lay waste all [Indian] settlements . . .
so that the country may not be merely overrun but destroyed.
You will by no means listen to any pleas for peace
before you destroy their settlements. The Indians must see
that there is so much hatred in our hearts to destroy everything
that supports their very existence.”
—Letter from Gen. George Washington to Major Gen. John Sullivan, 1775
Boarding School Arithmetic
At Wekonvertum Boarding School for Indian Eradication
we are taught how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide.
I learn quickly, faster than the others.
I count all the other children condemned to this school,
multiply it by the number of schools they tell us exist
across America, subtract that number from the set of all
Indian families, divide that by sorrow . . . squared,
and I realize that the future of Indians is zero.
A Wicked Irony
Mary Caught-in-Between was whipped
one hundred twenty-three times
at Wekonvertum Boarding School
for speaking Navajo during Latin—
a language dead for over a thousand years.
Problem Child
after a poem by Robert Conley
In her many years at
Wekonvertum Boarding School
Catherine Has-Some-Books
ran away twenty-seven times.
Whenever those
white teachers
were close
to finding her
she turned
into a doe
or a mouse
or a bird
and they never caught her
and they never understood.
An Indian Boy Dreams of Being Billy Mills
After his very first day
at george armstrong custer elementary
Arthur Greased-Lightning
ran away from the BIA school
across its BIA playground
with its BIA swing hanging by one chain
and its BIA slide with no ladder
past neat rows of BIA houses
and his own BIA house
where his BIA brothers and sisters
sat on their BIA porch
past The First Baptist Church
of Indian Conversion
over Charlie Going-Nowhere
sleeping outside the bingo hall
beyond the Church of Infinite Confusion
and out across the wide plains
where he turned into a buffalo
then a coyote and a deer
and finally into tall prairie grass
racing in the wind
Durable Breath
Outside my cabin window,
I hear Raven’s muffled caw rise from the river.
I think often of that night in your trailer at Nikiski,
of the old stories you told me, Dena’ina Suk’dua,
“That which is written on the people’s tongues.”
As a child you were beaten with a stick for speaking
your Native tongue. My father, born at Indian River,
does not know his mother’s language. Tonight,
Kenaitze Indians gather at a Russian Orthodox church
to mourn in altered syllables among white-washed
crosses and tarnished silver icons. As I lean toward darkness,
it is your voice that lifts Raven’s wings above the riverbank,
his ancient syllables rising like an ochre tide.
Call of the Wild
Once, I
was a wolf
living among wolves
on the stunted backbone
of tundra and forests
where we hunted moose
and caribou all winter
in deep, drifted snow
without escape,
where only the expansive silence
of the far north listened
as we howled at the moon
and ran the glacial earth
until I awoke again a man.
Many years have passed,
but on some still nights
I hear them waiting
above the rim of this valley,
calling to me from shadows
like a visitor who comes to my home
and knocks on the door with both fists.
Returning the Gift
All summer, I have been feeding a raven
who comes to the river asking for salmon.
For weeks, we talk of the origin of things
while I cut fish to dry on racks in the sun.
Months later, when geese fly overhead
in long, slow arrows, I am lost moose hunting.
When night falls upon its dark knees and the moon
is a fingernail at the rim of the world,
I listen to tight-stringed wind
from inside my fluttering tent, and by morning,
in a shudder the world is wintered.
Quietly, through the stark white of the North,
I watch him arrive to lead me from the forest,
tree by tree, until I am home and we spoke for the last time.
Tsin’aen, Saghani Ggaay. Tsin’aen.
“Thank you, Great Raven. Thank you.”
As he flies away towards far ochre mountains,
I hear him singing and singing.
A Polar Bear Prays for Colder Days Ahead
The world is melting beneath us.
Every year the ice pack shrinks, and we have to swim
farther and farther to fill our bellies.
We are not fish. We need the respite. Besides, on the ice
we catch seals and the occasional walrus—
even they need a place to hoist their weary bulk from the sea.
To quiet our raging hunger, we ramble inland, root
on the tundra, competing with wolves and grizzlies for caribou.
It is no easy thing to lose a world.
American Dreams
After watching a TV marathon
of Leave it to Beaver
and The Andy Griffith Show,
William Keeps-the-Fire went outside
to watch his reservation:
saw children playing
in abandoned trucks and refrigerators
rotting in fields,
cast stones at hungry dogs
tearing open garbage bags
when he walked past rows
of subsidized housing
where poverty settled on everything
like fine, red dust.
That night William Keeps-the-Fire dreamed
black-and-white dreams of a faraway heaven.
Indian Scalper
Jessie BlackHawk
standing in the rain
outside a stadium
illegally selling tickets
to a Redskins game
Indian Re-Education
The Dawes Act of 1887 tried to force
farming initiatives upon American Indians
After a hundred generations of hunting bison
Elijah High Horse turns a rocky field with a plow
where nothing grows in the garden, only sorrow,
and curses the gods who made stones.
Willie Tensleep Wins the Lottery
Willie TenSleep won the lottery
and after losing half to state and federal taxes
men in black suits with brief cases
came and said he had to pay the Indian Tax
which claimed the other half
because it’s policy to keep Indians poor.
They left poor Willie standing
in a cloud of dust on a thirsty road
clutching the empty purse of his shadow
searing into sand.
Fish Camp
Oscar Gray Wolf hid behind some bushes
watching Birdie Yazzie crouched beside the river
cutting salmon to dry on the smoke rack.
He loved the way the ends of her long black hair
the way her breasts filled her “Indian Pride” tee-shirt—
swaying from the motion of her knife;
her pink panties showing from her faded jeans.
When Birdie left to grab a soda from the ice chest,
Oscar pressed a cold salmon against his burning flesh.
Tumbleweeds
All across Eternal Poverty Indian Reservation
tumbleweeds roll across the red, arid earth:
the dry spinning husks of dreams.
So Begins the Lasting Silence
There is no doubt
I will be the last speaker
of our dying language.
I will know
that day has come
when I call out
across the frozen river
to the far white mountain
in my Native tongue
and wait forever
for an echo
that will not return—
the far white mountain
having forgotten its Indian name.
Potlatch
for Joe Secondchief
All day long guests arrive in our village
huddled along the frozen river
to mourn great uncle’s death.
From the sacred circle of our clan
skin drums echo and elders sing:
‘Syuu’ hwtiitł nac’ełtsiin yen
A potlatch is made for him.
Pulses quicken to the rhythm
dancers stream like vibrations
across the wooden floor
heavy with rifles and blankets.
‘Unggadi ‘dliis kanada’yaet yen ne’et dakozet
A potlatch song is sung for him in heaven.
Tonight I have learned there is an end
to every season, to every light
where even the yawning of brittle leaves
breaks the solitude of night.
Mileposts
Graves, like mileposts,
mark the distance between our villages.
Already this summer one cousin drunk on a curve;
an old man teetering along a twisted highway;
a mislaid infant, forgotten,
gently crushed beneath the roll
of fortune’s all-season tire.
As the sun wheels across a sheer sky
I stand in the heat of a great unbalanced day
watching ripples of salmon shambling upriver
spirits of ancestors ruffling the surface
on their journey home.
In the distance, a swaggering car approaches
shining like the beautiful black steel of old guns.
How to Conquer the New World
When I was fourteen
Sanford Nicolai
spoke at a potlatch.
He looked around the Great Hall
upon many faces from different clans,
pointed out the frost-lined window
towards the far white mountains
dominating our land and myth,
spoke in the slow words of an elder,
“For over a thousand years
we call them mountains K’ełt’aeni.
But Indians not very smart.
Very first white man comes along,
he look up at them mountains
and say, ah, Mt. Sanford.
He write it down on a map,
and Mt. Sanf
ord it is today,
my people.”
Song of a Whale Hunter
Like a lone sentry on an edgeless world of ice
an Eskimo hunter watches for whale. Spring
has returned to the North dragging
daylight on its carved ivory sled. The
old man feels warmth return to the Arctic
as the horizon-bound sun retraces its footprints