Poems by Native Americans

I'm taking a NA Studies course and the present focus within NA literature is poetry.
Some of the poems I've read are as moving as they are educational.

I AM NOT YOUR PRINCESS
by Chrystos

Sandpaper between two cultures which tear
one another apart
I'm not a means by which you can reach spiritual
understanding or even
learn to do beadwork
I'm only willing to tell you how to make fry bread
1 cup flour, spoon of salt, spoon of baking powder
Stir Add milk or water or beer until it holds together
Slap each piece into rounds
Let rest
Fry in hot grease until golden
This is Indian food
only if you know that Indian is a government word
which has nothing to do with our names for ourselves
I won't chant for you
I admit no spirituality to you
I will not sweat with you or ease your guilt with fine
turtle tales
I will not wear dancing clothes to read poetry or
explain hardly anything at all
I don't think your attempts to understand us are going
to work so
I'd rather you left us in whatever peace we can still
scramble up after all you continue to do
If you send me one more damn flyer about how to heal
myself
for $300 with special feminist counseling
I'll probably set fire to something
If you tell me one more time that I'm wise I'll throw
up on you
Look at me
See my confusion Loneliness fear worrying about all
our struggles to keep what little is left for us
Look at my heart not your fantasies
Please don't ever again tell me about your Cherokee
great-great grandmother
Don't assume I know every other Native Activist
in the world personally
That I even know names of all the tribes
or can pronounce names I've never heard
or that I'm expert at the peyote stitch
If you ever
again tell me
how strong I am
I'll lay down on the ground & moan so you'll see
at last my human weakness like your own
I'm not strong I'm scraped
I'm blessed with life while so many I've known are
dead
I have work to do dishes to wash a house to clean
There is no magic
See my simple cracked hands which have washed the same
things
you wash See my eyes dark with fear in a house by
myself
late at night See that to pity me or to adore me
are the same
1 cup flour, spoon of salt, spoon of baking powder,
liquid to hold
Remember this is only my recipe There are many others
Let me rest
here
at least

----

Fear Poem
by Joy Harjo

I release you, my beautiful and terrible
fear. I release you. You were my beloved
and hated twin, but now, I don't know you
as myself. I release you with all the
pain I would know at the death of
my children.

You are not my blood anymore.

I give you back to the white soldiers
who burned down my home, beheaded my children,
raped and sodomized my brothers and sisters.
I give you back to those who stole the
food from our plates when we were starving.

I release you, fear, because you hold
these scenes in front of me and I was born
with eyes that can never close.

I release you
I release you
I release you
I release you

I am not afraid to be angry.
I am not afraid to rejoice.
I am not afraid to be black.
I am not afraid to be white.
I am not afraid to be hungry.
I am not afraid to be full.
I am not afraid to be hated.
I am not afraid to be loved,

to be loved, to be loved, fear.

Oh, you have choked me, but I gave you the leash.
You have gutted me but I gave you the knife.
You have devoured me, but I laid myself across the fire.

I take myself back, fear.
You are not my shadow any longer.
I won't take you in my hands.
You can't live in my eye, my ears, my voice
my belly, or in my heart my heart
my heart my heart
But come here, fear
I am alive and you are so afraid
of dying.

They are amazing!I met three indians from the Brazilian Guarani Tribe this week and he asked us:" why do we have to learn Portuguese at school? Why do we have to learn the white man language?" And as he talked about his culture, I caught myself crying because everything he said was true.

Read parts of these this morning... going to have to read multiple times. These are incredible and so moving. Glad you shared this!

These are very nice, thanks for sharing them
they excite my pro Indian ism!!

By the way your beauty do not fit behind that gigantic mustache

I have to pull a poem from the net, written by a Native American, and write 1500 words analyzing it. If anyone has suggestions, they would be wonderful.

I look better with a mustache ;})

----
Found my poem. Hopefully I can come up with enough to write about...

No
by Joy Harjo

Yes that was me you saw shaking with bravery, with a government issued rifle on my back. I'm sorry I could not greet you, as you deserved, my relative.

They were not my tears. I have a reservoir inside. They will be cried by my sons, my daughters if I can't learn how to turn tears to stone.

Yes, that was me standing in the back door of the house in the alley, with fresh corn and bread for the neighbors.

I did not foresee the flood of blood. How they would forget our friendship, would return to kill the babies and me.

Yes, that was me whirling on the dance floor. We made such a racket with all that joy. I loved the whole world in that silly music.

I did not realize the terrible dance in the staccato of bullets.

Yes. I smelled the burning grease of corpses. And like a fool I expected our words might rise up and jam the artillery in the hands of dictators.

We had to keep going. We sang our grief to clean the air of turbulent spirits.

Yes, I did see the terrible black clouds as I cooked dinner. And the messages of the dying spelled there in the ashy sunset. Every one addressed: "mother".

There was nothing about it in the news. Everything was the same. Unemployment was up. Another queen crowned with flowers. Then there were the sports scores.

Yes, the distance was great between your country and mine. Yet our children played in the path between our
houses.

No. We had no quarrel with each other.

Okay then you do :-{)
but THIS poem does not need any trivial thing such as mustache to be beautiful; it stands on its own: it has heart.