And now the questions and answers, OK.
Yes.
Mrs Silko Leslie has agreed to do questions and answers.
So if anybody had any questions--
About anything.
It doesn't have to be--
about anything.
It doesn't have to be about anything I read tonight or said
tonight or just--
yes.
Do you still operate the Flood Plain Press?
I'm like one of the worst small press peoples in the world.
It's sort of not exactly, not exactly.
I haven't completely--
I mean, I have a whole bunch of copies
of books and the little handmade books
that I did for Flood Plain, but it just takes so much time
to do all these things.
And so I keep saying one of these days, but yeah,
so I sort of do, but it's not the kind of press
you want to depend on it all.
Very, very undependable.
That's how I'm running it.
Very undependable.
Good question.
Yes.
Would you do an art show?
Will I be doing an art show?
Yes, have you started it?
Well, actually, some of the star beings
agreed in early September.
And so they appeared at the Mark Rossi Gallery for a while,
but not all of them together.
I think that I have to--
I think I will know when they will allow it.
But right now, it seems like it isn't time yet.
But one of these days, I'll know that it be all
right to do that.
I do have to say that one of the--
I allowed one of my neighbors to take one of the star being
portraits home just to sort of borrow it,
and I thought it would be OK because the house is
within sight of our house.
But it seemed like that must have been the wrong thing
to do because it really gave her husband bad dreams
and sort of scared them, and they had to bring it back.
So that's how come I'm there--
the canvases are three feet by four feet.
So they're really imposing, and if you--
I describe in here how I've gotten to know them.
And for the most part, the star beings don't think much of us
human beings.
And so I'm very careful what I do with their portraits
because the portraits really are for them and not
for me or for us necessarily.
So that's why I can't really say when they'll all of them
be together.
Plus, I've gotten some idea that maybe I
have a couple of more that I have to--
that I'm not finished.
And so I don't-- and they want to be--
they have to be kept together.
And I feel that I probably would be--
it wouldn't be wise to sell them or split them up.
I think that would not be a good idea for me.
So anyway.
Yes.
This is about the arboa, ocean--
ocean what?
Ocean story the novella.
Yes.
There is nothing to do is the Navajo,
or it's your personal Odyssey?
Ocean story is how it came about was
a German publisher, a small press in Germany,
was doing a series of books that had to somehow have
to do with the ocean, somehow.
And I was very interested in the Gulf of California
and the Sonoran coast.
And also, with the feeling at night up
in the Tucson Mountains at night when you look away--
when you look into the areas where there's no city lights,
you get the feeling of ocean.
And of course, if you read even just a little bit
about the geology, the geologic history of this area,
and in fact, the whole Western part of the United States,
and of course, on back, the sandstone--
all these sandstone formations and this entire area,
New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, the remnants of the great ocean,
the great inland seas, are still there.
So I got interested, and I started.
I did all this research, and time went by, one year went by,
two years went by, three years went by,
and these poor German publishers were Meanwhile
publishing the other books.
And finally, in the summer of 2007, I broke my foot
and so I just had to stay in the house.
And it was really hot too, which is good.
It makes you stay in the house and write.
And I went through all my notes, and the Germans
wanted nonfiction.
So most of the material that I had gathered was nonfiction,
and at the same time, I had been,
I think, thinking about what had happened
in this country politically since the 9/11 attacks.
And by 2007, you could see that something very terrible
had happened in this country.
And so, as I was working on all of this material,
I kept trying to write it as nonfiction.
And something in me just--
I let the fiction part of me start,
and I came up with a first-person narrator who
didn't care what people thought of her, and she was wonderful.
She wasn't me.
And for me, in my writing, I've mostly used the third person.
So I spun this wonderful story about this woman
and that she goes with this guy who was born in North Africa.
And he gets scared to stay in this country
because he thinks even though he's a naturalized US citizen
and been in the US military.
And so it's actually--
I call it Puerto Z, but it's really
Puerto Penasco, Rocky Point.
And so they go down there.
But it's more than that.
There's all sorts of references to the way the ocean was
and the power of the ocean.
And also to the old people also have these different references
and rituals for ocean.
And so that's worked in there.
And so one of the parts of it that makes it kind of radical
is that the narrator's boyfriend or man
that she goes with is really scared of staying in the US
because he thinks that he will be--
the US government will grab him.
And because he was born in North Africa
because of how crazy everything went after 9/11.
And when they get down there, down to Rocky Point
in the fancy condominiums down there,
he thinks he sees these guys that--
that's one of the places they take
people for the secret interrogations,
and so he gets really scared.
But anyway, it's--
I laugh about it because the narrator is very irreverent,
and she doesn't care.
She doesn't care what people think of her,
but it's so-- when you make a first-person narrator,
it's always so tempting to make people,
you know, because it might be you,
the writer led to like her.
And that's awful.
That's a mistake, you know.
And so the reason that I'm happiest with ocean story
is because of this narrator, this woman,
who isn't afraid to say what she thinks.
And then she has an encounter with the ocean
and which is very funny.
It could have been fatal, but it wasn't.
And the fishermen find her and they have those telephones that
can take pictures.
And at first, they say they thought it was a mermaid,
but then she says she was glad that the light was dimmed
so that because it was on the television in Mexico, you know,
listening.
Anyway, so I put it out.
I don't know how it's doing on in terms
of the other things that are being sold on that website.
But it made me happy for her to go into the world.
So anyway that's why I'm so pleased about it.
It's fiction, even though you have a first-person narrator.
And you might want to mistake me with her,
but that would be a mistake because she's
a more of a free spirit than I am.
Yes.
I was wondering, in light of your encompassing vision
of the time in this place.
I was wondering if you would speak a little bit about what's
been going on in the legislature of the state.
Specifically, the ethnic studies ban that our students
are dealing with in Tucson.
You know the direction that things have gone
is to the point now where it's the absurdity of it
is so clear, and the impossibility
of any kind of meaningful dialogue is so clear.
That was part of the reason I decided
that it makes more sense to talk to the rattlesnakes
and the bees and the hummingbirds
than it even does to try to, at least
in a kind of sane or intelligent way, talk about those things.
It's insane.
It's absurd that anyone should even
question the right of people to study their own history
and culture.
I think it's one of the many Geneva Conventions
that Indigenous people or people of a place
are allowed to know who they are.
I'll just say this.
That every day and all the years that I was in school
and even now, we get quite ethnic studies all the time,
and I don't get why that we can't have this.
Well, I do understand why and it really
has nothing to do with education or anything sane.
So that's about all that I can say.
I think that in some way, by challenging that right
to that knowledge, maybe it will help people
understand how precious it is.
It'll have the reverse effect as these things often
do that when you tell people you can't do this,
you can't study this.
This is outlawed.
So I don't feel despair.
I don't feel-- well, for a lot of reasons
because you can see that within another 100 or 200 years,
you can see what?
This part of the Southwest is going to look like.
You can already tell.
[APPLAUSE] Makes me very happy.
Before I came tonight, I had a letter from--
a note from Vernon Masayesva up at Avila and he wrote--
he said I'm an elder now.
He said he was way down in my own country,
and he was tracing all of the different Hopi symbols that
are way down there.
And I believe that it's in time that through the internet,
through other things that, once again,
the related people of the Americas are linking up,
and it's inevitable.
And the migration North they, of course,
it doesn't help that the Civil War is
broken out and in Chihuahua state first,
but that's what it is.
But there's also other forces more ancient
that don't have to do just with economics or Civil War.
But on this continent, that flow of human beings and the fact
that throughout the Americas that this
is one homeland and the people that come from the South
belong here.
They've always crossed over.
One of the most disgusting things you can run into
is how American archeology and certain discoveries
up around Santa Fe and great big cities
that look at an awful lot like the cities to the South,
how all of that kind of gets well just not
uncovered because politically, it
would be too horrendous to have to face that this
is the land of the people from the South
and that were all really one big family.
It's only a matter of time, and we're
seeing the worst of the end.
At the end, when some kind of power is ending, i.e.
the occupational power, there's always a terrible struggle.
But it's already-- it's all over.
In the late '80s--
no, in the late '90s, I made a trip
through from Western North Carolina University all the way
to the East, and this is in the late '90s.
And when I was in one of the towns, now
I don't remember which one of the university towns
there right by the university this really nice house
was for sale right near the university
nice lawn and everything.
But the sign on the lawn says the vende casa.
There's just so many people in North Carolina and Georgia now.
I mean, the retaking of Aztlan or that shift
is more than just economic, or like I
said, fleeing the Civil War.
It's about something that's gone on for a very great long time.
So what I would say to get back to what your question was,
you know, those people like that want to sort of--
want ignorance to reign, that sort of thing.
That's just not something you should even just get very upset
about because it's on the way out.
It's almost over for them.
And I mean the demographics and the sense is not,
you know-- so the best thing to do is just say,
you know, and just kind of not even
put that much attention or energy toward it,
but certainly keep the knowledge and keep making ties.
Keep making connections just like the people from Hopi
are going way down into my country.
Make sure that we look after our family members to the South.
Make sure that we don't forget.
Then if-- you know it doesn't matter either
if it's in my lifetime or your lifetime.
But know that in 150 years, maybe less, maybe a little bit
more, everything here will be very, very different
and in a way that we can be at peace with.
That's what I would say about that.
Thank you very, very much.
[APPLAUSE]