Walk

A dead umbrella

Carryout Styrofoam

Crow with orange in his beak

Blue wad of gum

Ferns drinking rain

Winds visiting from the north

A black squirrel who likes my singing

Crisp holly with red berries

A dead umbrella

More winds

Giants with roots into the earth and sky

I lean against them before turning in

My song returns from where it came

c Joy Harjo January 22, 12 Vancouver, BC

Muscogee Nation News Column December 2011

Muscogee Nation News Column December 2011

On the way back home I made it up to Santa Fe to perform music with keyboard player Robert Muller at the Santa Fe Winter Indian Market. Many Mvskoke citizens were there at the market, selling their art. Kenneth Johnson had a booth where he demonstrated his remarkable art of jewelry making. Mary E. Irene and Linda Irene were there with their beautiful art.

A few weeks before was part of an honoring stomp dance led by George Coser, Jr. for the induction Mvskoke citizen, the jazz tenor saxophone player Jim Pepper into the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame in Tulsa. Pepper started the first jazz fusion band, he helped set off the world music movement with Choctaw/African American jazz trumpet player Don Cherry, and Pepper had a hit song with Witchi Tai To. That’s not all. He was one of the first to blend jazz with tribal music. Jim’s father was of the Kaw people of Oklahoma. Jim’s sister Suzy Pepper Henry attended with her husband Steve Pepper. Also watch for young Cherokee alto sax genius Sharel Cassity. She received a commendation. She’s from Oklahoma. I saw her performing at the Blue Note in New York City, and she “blew me away”, so to speak.

Congratulations to all of us. When one person succeeds, we all succeed.

In honor of being a home, one of my songs, “Goin Home”--

Last dance and the night is almost over--

One last round under the starry sky.

We’re all going home someway, somehow when it’s over.

Hey e yah, hey e yay, aye e yah aye e yay

If you’ve found love in the circle then hold onto it, not too tight.

If you have to let love go then let it go. Keep on dancing.

“I don’t care if you’re married sixteen times

I’ll get you yet.”

Goin home, goin home

“I’m from Oklahoma got no one to call mine.”

“A love supreme, a love supreme—“

Everybody wants a love supreme.

“When the dance is over sweetheart, take me home in your one-eyed Ford.”

But first, we have to stop and pick up Grandma, my uncle, my aunties…and then there’s all my kids…

Goin home, goin home, goin home

It’s time to go home

Be kind to all you meet along the way

Mvto mvto to everybody

For all the good times

Good night, sleep tight.

Goin home, goin home

Goin home

Drive safely, or better yet, don’t drive at all.

Don’t forget: hold somebody’s hand through the dark.

Goin home, goin home

Kul-ku-ce cv-na-kē, hv-ya-yi-ca-res,


Kul-ku-ce cv-na-kē, hv-ya-yi-ca-res,

Kul-ku-ce cv-na-kē, hv-ya-yi-ca-res,

Kul-ke-kvs, kul-ke-kvs, kul-ke-kvs

Muscogee Nation News November 2011

Here's last month's Muscogee Nation News column. Will try to tend to this blog more--Facebook seems to get too much of my attention.

    The last two months I have lived in Tulsa, helping out my mother. I left Tulsa when I was a teenager. I fled a difficult home to go to high school at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which was then a Bureau of Indian Affairs high school with an emphasis in arts. There was also a two-year postgraduate program. I remember three other Creek students there: Sandy and Phyllis Fife, and Richard Ray Whitman. That school literally saved my life, as it did for many of the students who attended. It affirmed my identity as a native person, as an artist, and it gave me a refuge from an abusive situation at home. I left Oklahoma in a trail of pain.

    I have returned frequently to Oklahoma over the years, to keep a connection with my family and my tribe. I kept a close relationship with my father, a Creek man, who lived his last years in Texas near the Gulf waters.  We both loved the water. When the abusive stepparent died in the early nineties, only then could I return to my mother’s house.  Before then, I saw my mother at work, or elsewhere.

       We human beings are faced with all kinds of tests in this world. We don’t always understand them. There are some things that take an eternity to understand. There has never been any doubt as to my mother’s love, and I have to believe that the love of the Creator (who is not invested in any religious affiliation) remains steadfast and center to any path, to any endeavor begun with the intent to bring kindness to the world, though sometimes it may seem otherwise.

       I considered the path of our people and the test of our path as I gathered with many others in the tribe for the 26^th Annual Council Oak Ceremony on a warm, fall day in Tulsa. We stood together at the place the Locvpokv people from our nation arrived after our forced removal from our Alabama homelands. The Locvpokv people placed ashes from their original fires at the base of an oak tree on the hill where we now stood, many years and generations later, near the Arkansas River. I felt the connection between us like the beautiful and mysterious light from the fire, threading us together. I drank in every word spoken, felt every little breeze, and particle of sun. I listened to the poetry in the speech by our Chief of Staff, Edwin Marshall, the wise threading of history in the words of Ted Isham, our Cultural Preservation Manager, and took to heart the words of the many other speakers. 

      We may not understand the why of the injustice of the bloodshed, the forced move far away from our beloved lands, but we are in a story that winds through eternity. And we are still standing together.

       I needed the people that afternoon. I was fresh with grief from my mother’s passing from this world.

       I felt the memory of the people as it lives in our bones. I renewed my promise to carry my part of the story home the best way possible.

       This is home. This is what home means.

Literary Salon Spotlights Famed Iowa Writers’ Workshop

NOVEMBER 14

Las Vegas

Literary Salon Spotlights Famed Iowa Writers’ Workshop

Acclaimed authors to read at The Lady Silvia Saturday, November 19th
6-7:30 pm

LAS VEGAS - Five acclaimed writers, all classmates at the famed Iowa Writers’ Workshop, will gather for conversation and readings on Saturday, November 19, 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm at The Lady Silvia located in Soho Lofts, 900 S. Las Vegas Boulevard #140. 

Poet Joy Harjo, writer Michelle Huneven, literary activist Glenn Schaeffer, writer Doug Unger and journalist Eric Olsen will reflect on their shared experiences as young writers in Iowa City nearly thirty years ago. 

The salon will feature the just-released, We Wanted to Be Writers: Life, Love and Literature at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop published by Skyhorse Publishing. The book will be for sale and the authors will be available for book signings. 

The Iowa Writers’ Workshop is one of the most highly regarded creative writing programs in the U.S. The program began in 1936 and its alumni have won seventeen Pulitzer Prizes, as well as numerous National Book Awards and other major literary honors. Four recent Poets Laureate have been either graduates or faculty of the Workshop. We Wanted to Be Writers is a rollicking and insightful blend of interviews, commentary, advice, gossip, anecdotes, analyses, history, and asides with nearly 30 graduates and teachers at the now legendary Iowa Writers’ Workshop between 1974 and 1978. Among the talents that emerged in those years—writing, passionately jousting, criticizing, drinking, and debating in the classrooms and barrooms of Iowa City—were the young versions of writers who became John Irving, Jane Smiley, T.C. Boyle, Michelle Huneven, Allan Gurganus, Sandra Cisneros, Jayne Ann Phillips, Joy Harjo, and many others. 

The event is FREE and open to the public. A cash bar with refreshments will be provided. The Lady Silvia is located in the Soho Lofts building at the corner of Fourth and Hoover Avenue, with free parking available across the street. 

The Saturday salon is sponsored by the Vegas Valley Book Festival and Nevada Humanities with support from Lady Silvia, Art Futures Las Vegas, and Vegas Seven Magazine.

More information: 702.229.5431

http://wewantedtobewriters.com

MNN Column October 2011

We are beginning the season of transformation. It is the time to bring in the harvest. The squirrels in my mother’s neighborhood in Tulsa are putting away for winter. We are all reaping what we have sown. This is happening at many levels of our existence.

I remember our beloved Mvskoke person Phillip Deere ’s words as many of us stood together at America’s Capitol at the end point of The Longest Walk the summer of 1978.  This time marked the end of a long walk of a protest of indigenous peoples to the Capitol, to make our presence known, to once again come to the face of colonized power to address them, one human being to another.

Following is an excerpted version of Deere’s words to remind and inspire us. They are prophetic and remain pertinent and living for us. Mvto. Mvto.

We are part of nature. Our pipes are red. Our faces, many times, we paint red. But we represent the Creation. We hear about Red Power. There are many definitions to Red Power.

Sometimes we refer to Red as the blood. But all colors of Man have the same color of blood. The fish life, they have blood also. The animals, too, have red blood. Everyone has red blood. But everyone was not made out of the red clay of America.

Only the Indian people are the original people of America. Our roots are buried deep in the soils of America. We are the only people who have continued with the oldest religion in this country. We are the people who still yet speak the languages given to us by the Creator. Our religion has survived; our languages have survived.

Long before this building (the Capital) was built, my ancestors talked the language that I talk today…I see, in the future, perhaps this civilization is coming near to the end. For that reason, we have continued with the instructions of our ancestors. We are the only people who know how to survive in this country. We have existed here for thousands and thousands of years. The smartest man in America does not know and cannot date the time that we originated.

This is our homeland. We came from no other country. Regardless of how many millions and millions of dollars are spent on an Indian, to make him someone else, all these millions have failed to make a White Man out of the Indian. We are the evidence of the Western Hemisphere!

…I feel sorry for the non-Indian. I can see the confusion among them. This society is confused. I can see that as a bystander…If I were with the society, I too would be confused. In the beginning of time, when everything was created, our ancestors also came about in this part of the world. There is no Indian here, on these grounds that will say that we came across the Bering Straits. There is no Indian standing among us who will say that we descended from apes and monkeys.

We have always looked at ourselves as human beings…

We are the original people here…We have forgotten in a short time what when the first people landed on our shores, they could not survive. Even the pilgrims could not survive. The Indians showed them the way of survival. We taught them how to live.

We taught them how to plant corn. That corn was a Tree of Life for us. We showed them that this is life here in America. And they survived.

Not too many years afterwards, foreign agents came to our house and tried to tell us how to farm. Not too many years afterwards, they began to tell us how to live. They began to tell us that our religion was wrong; our way of life was no good. This is not the agreement that we made. This is not the treaty that we made with the U.S. government, or any other country….We had an unchanging government. The law of love, peace, and respect, no man-made laws will ever take the place of it! And this is the law that we have always lived by.

Because we understood this law, every Indian door was open. Through these doors walked Christopher Columbus. Through these doors walked the Pilgrims, because of that law of love and respect that we had for all human beings.

But time changed. After entering our door, they took advantage of the Native people here. Their greed -- we have seen it. Many of our people have died. Many of our people were massacred because they wanted more land. We gave them land through treaties. We gave and we gave, and we have no more to give today!

Not only land was taken, even the culture, even the religion, under man-made laws, were taken away from the Native people. But we managed to survive. We continued with our way of life.

The jailhouses, the prisons in this country, are no more than four hundred years old. Prior to the coming of Columbus, more than four hundred tribes, speaking different languages, having different ways, having different religions, lived here. None of these tribes had jailhouses. They had no prison walls. They had no insane asylums. No country today can exist without them! Why did we not have any prisons? Why did we not have jailhouses or insane asylums? Because we lived by an understood law.

We understood what life is all about. To this day, we are not confused. My elders, spiritual leaders, medicine men, clan mothers, have no disagreements. We are not that confused. We come to you with one mind. We do not disagree on our religion. I have never tried to convert the Lakota people into Muskogee ways.

On every corner there is a church, each of them trying to convert the other one. We did not come here with that kind of confusion. We respect one another's religion. We respect one another's visions. That is our only way of existing in this country here -- that is our survival. This is our strength. Even though we are greatly outnumbered, our ideas will overcome those numbers!

People in this society have been driven away, and have been taken away so far from reality that they will not sit down under a tree and talk to us. They won't even sit down in their office to listen to the Indian. We have experienced this all this time, even in the local offices at home. Those who are holding positions through the government refuse to listen to the grassroots Indians because they have been so far away from that natural way of thinking. They have to look at a piece of paper and get directions from the higher-ups. Even their minds are controlled. They can't make decisions for themselves.

…Every tribe has a trail of tears. We wonder when it is going to end. I would like to see the time come when we can act like human beings and be able to sit around and iron our problems out.

…Your life is at stake. Your survival depends on this…

Phillip Deere 1929 to 1985

Native American Music Awards: Please Vote

RED DREAMS A TRAIL BEYOND TEARS is up for ARTIST OF THE YEAR and BEST WORLD MUSIC RECORDING. LAST CHANCE TO VOTE!

http://www.nativeamericanmusicawards.com/votenow.cfm

Vote for Joy Harjo in the 2011 Native American Music Awards!

The 2011 Native American Music Awards National Voting Campaign is entering its final week! 

Joy has been nominated for ARTIST OF THE YEAR AND BEST WORLD ALBUM.

You can cast your votes for the winners of the 13th Annual Awards program by clicking here: 

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NAMA2011W

Joy's New CD Nominated for Best Flute CD in the Aboriginal Peoples Choice Music Awards. Please Register and Vote!

http://aboriginalpeopleschoice.com/sign-up/

Rainbow Gratitude Wins Best Contemporary/Modern Instrumental at the Indian Summer Festival.

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

 for an Anthology of Native American poetry, fiction and nonfiction to be published by Lost Horse Press, THEME: Humor

Tiffany Midge and Natanya Ann Pulley are collecting original creative works for an anthology of Indigenous poetry, fiction, and nonfiction with humor as its theme.  Humor has always been a hallmark of Native cultures and testifies to Native peoples’ wit, resiliency and fondness for the sharing of good stories and laughter; after all, every day is a good day to laugh!  For this collection the editors are interested in writing that channels inner tricksters, clowns and heyokas as the quintessential comedians and ultimate healers.  The editors will be considering creative work that showcases satire, irony, irreverence, hyperbole, mirth, celebration, humor both riotous and dry and first-rate storytelling.    

Vine Deloria's essay "Indian Humor,” published in his book Custer Died For Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto  conveys:  "One of the best ways to understand a people is to know what makes them laugh. Laughter encompasses the limits of the soul. In humor life is redefined and accepted. Irony and satire provide much keener insights into a group's collective psyche and values than do years of research." 

In The Sacred Hoop, Paula Gunn Allen writes:  “Certainly the time frame we presently inhabit has much that is shabby and tricky to offer; and much that needs to be treated with laughter and ironic humor; it is this spirit of the trickster creator that keeps Indians alive and vital in the face of horror.”

Kenneth Lincoln, author of  Indi'n Humor: Bicultural Play in Native America emphasizes    that “humor is a way of resisting genocide and is used as a means of survival.”

According to Ojibway author Drew Hayden Taylor, Comedy is a very serious business. “I was once told by an Elder from Alberta's Blood Reserve that "humour is the WD40 of healing.”

Send your best work medicine (poetry, fiction, nonfiction) that enlivens, uplifts, amuses, startles, heals and surprises as a Word or RTF attachment to lol.ndn@gmail.com

 or snail mail to Tiffany Midge, 204 East ‘A’ Street, Apt. 2,  83843.  Deadline January 31, 2012.

Please be sure to include a bio, your tribal affiliation, and your contact information.  Please include acknowledgements if your submission has been previously published.

ABOUT THE EDITORS:

Natanya Ann Pulley's maternal family home is near Tuba City, Arizona. She is half-Dine of the Kiiyaa'aanii (Towering House Clan). Bicheii is Tachiinii (Red Running Into Water Clan). Natanya is currently working on her PhD at the University of Utah in Fiction Writing. She is an editor of Quarterly West and her work can be found in Western Humanities Review, The Florida Review, Moon Milk Review, The Collagist, Drunken Boat and on her site: gappsbasement.com. In addition to reading and studying experimental forms, disability and horror theory, Natanya enjoys being part of an unruly pack composed of her husband JP, their three psychic dogs, and a tank of dreamsunk fish. 

Tiffany Midge is an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux, and a poetry MFA graduate from the University of Idaho.  Her poetry collection Outlaws, Renegades and Saints: Diary of Mixed-up Halfbreed won the Native Writers of the Americas First Book Award.  The chapbook, Guiding the Stars to their Campfire, Driving the Salmon to their Beds was published by Gazoobi Tales .  A three-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize, Tiffany has published poetry and nonfiction in Shenandoah, North American Review, Poetry Northwest and most recently in The Raven Chronicles, Florida Review , No Tell Motel, Drunken Boat and South Dakota Review.  Tiffany resides in Moscow, Idaho (In Nez Perce country) and teaches part time with Northwest Indian College.  She keeps the blog UGH; Uncivilized Grunting Heathen at http://breakfastattiphanys.blogspot.com/

Lost Horse Press Mission Statement

Established in 1998, Lost Horse Press—a nonprofit independent press—publishes poetry titles of high literary merit, and makes available other fine contemporary literature through cultural, educational and publishing programs and activities. The Lost Horse New Poets, Short Books Series, edited by Marvin Bell, is dedicated to works—often ignored by conglomerate publishers—which are so much in danger of vanishing into obscurity in what has become the age of chain stores and mass appeal food, movies, art and books.  http://www.losthorsepress.org/

Red Dreams, A Trail Beyond Tears Has Been Nominated

Click here to see my recent Newsletter and Vote: http://eepurl.com/fA-tQ

Muscogee Nation News Column for August 2011

“The beat goes on.” In my teens that was the title and repeating refrain of a Sonny and Cher song. “Beat” also refers to the rhythm. It’s what literally holds us together, everyone, even beloved Earth. When someone gets sick, the rhythm is off somewhere in the body and spirit. “Beat” also refers to journalistic territory.

I’m back, on beat for our tribal paper. My beat is Indian country at large, and Indian country is vast. And my path in life seems to involve traveling around and getting to know people especially in Indian country. And everywhere I go I meet up with Creeks, or Mvskoke Nation expatriates.

The month of May I was in residence at Koahnic Broadcasting in Anchorage, Alaska. This is the home of one of my favorite radio stations, KNBA, a native station. David Sam, Athabascan spins great tunes on his show Indigenous Expressions, and used to hang out with Mvskoke citizen, the saxophone player Jim Pepper when Jim ran there years ago.

Danny Preston is another favorite DJ, or on-air host. And there’s the inimitable Shyanne Beatty, Athabascan producer and host of Earthsongs, a national native music program. While I was there I worked on a show idea, performed with a band at the Alaska Native Heritage Center on Mother’s Day, and traveled about giving performances in native communities.

One of my favorite places is Nome, a community at the edge of the Bering Sea. The first thing I saw when I got off the plane, after flying over ocean and ice break, was a man driving a pickup with a pet reindeer in the back. My friend, the writer, artist and healer MaryJane Litchfield and I watched walrus hunters go out into the sea to hunt, then she took me to the summer camps where drying racks were hanging with seal meat. The next day I traveled out onto the tundra with her son. We got close to musk oxen herds. The tundra smelled sweet. The spirit there was very strong.

Next I flew to Barrow, the northernmost point of the U.S., Inupiat territory. By mid May the sun was out twenty-four hours. I arrived at the end of whaling season. The morning I was there I walked around the town, saw a lemming, a kind of rodent, run under a stored boat. My favorite moment was hanging the Tuzzy Library with some young Inupiat boys, Steven Ivanoff and Eben Hopson.

One of our tribal members, Jim Pepper Henry, Jim Pepper’s nephew, is head of the Anchorage Museum in Anchorage. He took me on a tour of the museum, from the basement with its impressive heating system to the top floor with the mastodon exhibit. The museum is quite impressive. Not only are the roots of the indigenous cultures of Alaska beautifully acknowledged and displayed there, the museum also maintains a gallery of contemporary native artists. The operation is first class, and Pepper Henry does us proud. He is also in charge of his uncle’s affairs.

This reminds me, that on November 16^th Jim Pepper, jazz player and world music innovator of the Mvskoke Nation will be inducted into the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame, right there in Tulsa. Jim Pepper Henry will be there. I plan to also be there to celebrate this honoring. When one of us is honored, everyone is honored. I hope to see you there.

I’ll be back in the Nation toward the end of August and look forward to visiting. Porky, you behave yourself.