That's nice.
I'd like to welcome you here, Luci,
on behalf of the Intertribal Graduate Council.
I also want to do the commercial.
For all you guys in the hall, I'll
make this quick so you don't have to stand
any longer than you have to.
These things are $2 out front.
Buy one.
Got some books, $7, buy one.
$15 out front.
He deserves a big hand for that, huh?
OK, it's my pleasure to introduce tonight's speaker,
Luci Tapahonso.
Luci is presently working as an assistant professor
at the University of Kansas in Lawrence.
She's written a number of books.
Among them, One More Shiprock Night, Seasonal Woman,
A Breeze Swept Through, and her new manuscript,
which will be published by the University of Arizona Press
in the Sun Tracks series, we hope in the next year,
is titled Sáanii Dahataal.
And she can fix that when she comes up here,
but I'm trying Luci.
The subtitle, the translated title,
is, The Women are Singing.
A very fine manuscript that we're all looking forward
to seeing in print.
Among the many honors--
to, inspired by Ernie, keep this very brief--
there's one honor of Luci's that I
wanted to mention among the many that she's earned for her work.
And that was an honor she received this year when
she was recognized as the Grand Marshal
at the 68th annual Northern Navajo Fair Parade in Shiprock.
So here she is the Grand Marshal from Shiprock, Luci Tapahonso.
Yá'át'ééh.
Thank you, Larry.
It's Sáanii Dahataal is the title of that.
[DINÉ BIZAAD]
I am from Shiprock, New Mexico, and so I
was very honored and very pleased to have been selected
for the Parade honor because I had always gone back every year
for the Shiprock Fair and it's something
that's really important to my family and to myself.
And so I'm glad that Larry mentioned
that because it's really--
I think that it's just an honor that is, for me, something that
can't be surpassed because it's from my own home community
and it's all my relatives and my friends, people I grew up with
and people I went to school with and my former teachers.
And it's really the place that I'm from, so I'm pleased.
I was very pleased about that.
I'm going to start with a prose piece called
It Was a Special Treat that is about that area of New
Mexico in the 1960s.
When I was growing up in the middle, late 1960s.
It was a special treat.
Trips to Farmington were a special
treat when we were children.
Sometimes when we didn't get to go along,
we cried so hard that we finally had to draw straws
to decide fairly who would get to go.
My oldest brother always went because he drove.
My other brother went because he helped carry laundry.
My father went because he was the father.
And my mother went because she had the money
and knew where to go and what to buy.
And only one or two kids were allowed
to go because we got in the way and beg for things all
the time.
We got up early on the Saturdays that we were going to town.
We would get ready, sort laundry,
and gather up pop bottles that we turned in for money.
My father always checked the oil and tires on the pickup.
And then he and my brothers would load up the big laundry
tubs, securing the canvas covers with heavy wooden blocks.
We would drive out of the front yard and the unfortunate
ones who had to stay home would wave goodbye sullenly.
The dogs chased the truck down the road a ways
before turning home.
In Farmington, we would go to the laundry first.
It was always dark and clammy inside.
We liked pulling clothes out of the wringer,
even though my mother was nervous about letting us help.
After that, we drove downtown and parked in the free lot
north of Main Street.
Sometimes my father got off at the library
and we picked him up after we finished shopping.
Someone always had to watch the pickup,
and usually the one who was naughty at the laundry
had to sit in the pickup for two or three hours.
Then everyone else got to see things around town.
If my father didn't go to the library,
the kids were off the hook, naughty or not,
because he waited in the pick up and read the Reader's Digest.
When we stopped at Safeway, our last stop,
it was early evening.
My mother would buy some baloney or cooked chicken
and plastic wrapped trays and a loaf of bread.
We would eat this on our way home.
After the groceries were packed in securely
under the canvas and wooden blocks,
we loaded up again and started to drive west to Shiprock.
We talked about who we saw, what we should have bought
instead of what we did buy.
Maybe we would exchange it next time.
Then the talking would slow down.
And by the time we reach the Blue Window gas station,
everyone but my father was sleepy.
He would start singing in Navajo in a clear, strong voice.
And a once in a while, my mother would ask him
about certain songs she heard once.
Do you know it?
It was something like this.
And she would sing a bit, and he would
catch it and finish the song.
We listen half asleep.
I would whisper to my sister, "He sounds
like those men on Navajo hour."
"I know.
It's so good.", she'd answer.
And we slept until we arrived home.
This is called Braiding a Daughter's Hair.
Each night I braid her hair.
My fingers slip through the thick silkiness,
weaving the strands into a single black stream.
The air feels like something will happen, she says.
Maybe it will snow.
The moon outside is a silver arc in the cold sky.
In the old stories, they say the moon comes
as a beautiful horse, I tell her.
From the bedroom window, we look out
at the glistening night sky.
It is outside the house, the frozen night.
It glimmers with her pleas for snow.
It glimmers in her night dreams, a fusion of music, laughter,
talk of boys and clothes.
It glimmers here in the fibers of my bed sheets.
There above the old roar of the Kaw River.
It glimmers in the western sky, where he thinks of me
and smiles.
In an old story, a woman and her daughter
were alone in the winter and the mother
said, "Tomorrow if the sun rises,
it will come as many different horses."
This poem is one that I wrote.
I guess this is--
I consider this my first Midwestern poem.
It's a poem called Dit'óódí and the meaning of that becomes
obvious in the poem itself.
The skin behind one's ear is exquisite, thin, delicate,
dit'óódí, dit'óódí.
I hear words from your mouth, wet and warm with breath.
It is said that the wind enters each newborn,
a whoosh of breath inside and the baby gasps.
It is wet with wind, it is holy, it is sacred.
Such energy we are with wind inside alive, alive.
Tell me words from the warmth of your throat, mouth,
down to darkness of heart beating, beating.
It travels then to my ears, mind, skin, surrounding it.
Dit'óódí,dit'óódí cradling the pulse.
My pulse, mirror of heart gentle,
steady organ swaying in red warmth inside me.
Inside me, all that I ever ate, all I have cried about,
all I have laughed through.
Tell me words of healing, words of holiness.
Utter slowly into these wires of magic, magic.
900 miles shimmering with care and tears.
My doctor said, take these every day.
The only effect may be a slowed heartbeat.
It is so.
Speak to me words, my heart quickens a bit.
Reaching back into recent days, last month, for pulses missed,
skipped over as I slept in darkness.
My heart beats slower, slower.
Two beats slide into one.
I sleep on.
A dream scene is much too slow, but anything
can happen in dreams.
Later, as I walked down the aisle selecting cuts of meat,
in between picking up something tasty and easy to fix.
And a roast to simmer all day, steamed rice and warm and spicy
from the oven, my pulse slowed.
It remains there beating above shiny tile and chilled air,
a small space of loneliness.
Your voice retrieves the missing pulses of my heart.
It works.
It works over distances of hills, flat plains,
lonely silos, and sturdy houses of the Midwest,
and I am healed.
Your breath of words occur beneath the solid white bone
around my ear.
And my pulse continues steadily, your words, your life
swirls inside the dark depths of my own body.
This is called Light a Candle.
The other night, thunder shook the house and lightning slashed
brilliant blue across the bed.
I slept in bits.
My heart race with each explosion of noise and rain.
And though he helped me, my breath
was ragged and exhausted I may never
sleep through these storms.
Hector, light a candle for me.
Last week, we returned to our birthplace.
And as we drove through southern Colorado,
we were stunned by the beauty of autumn leaves,
the deep cool mountain canyons, and twice deer
stood beside the road.
They watch as we pass through their land.
Their eyes glisten black softness.
Misty said, "Isn't it neat that we see them on our way home?"
Hector, light a candle for her.
In a small reservation town, a little boy shakes his mother.
She's passed out on the floor and he is hungry.
Mama, he says, can you make some potatoes?
She stirs.
Leave me alone, dammit.
He climbs up on the counter, takes down a box of Cheerios,
then sits back down to watch TV.
The noise he makes eating dry cereal is steady and quiet.
Hector, light a candle for him.
Some evenings, Leona just wants to sit with her sisters
and mother around the kitchen table and talk of everything
and nothing.
Instead, she sits in the quiet kitchen,
and outside leaves blow against the window.
The wind is cold and damp.
In front of Leona, the table stretches out clean and shiny.
Hector, light a candle for her.
North of here, the car rushes westward, a wide muted roar.
The trees sway and brush against each other.
Dry, thin leaves swirl in the cold wind.
The river smell and heavy winds settle into my hair,
absorbing the dull thundering water, the rolling
waves of prairie wind.
This time I have walked among the holy people, the river,
the wind, the air swirling down from the hills,
the silent grace of egos as they snatch
their prey, the exhilaration of the biggest catch,
the silent pleas of those who drowned here.
Hector, light a candle for me.
Light a candle for me.
You know, when I moved there, I was
very amazed by the size of the rivers there.
And I realized that what we consider rivers here
is not really a river at all.
I'm going to read this poem for [? Rajo ?]
and for his grandmother.
It's called All I Want.
All I want is the bread to turn out like hers just once.
Brown crusts, soft, airy insides, rich and round,
that is all.
So I ask her, how many cups?
Ah yaa ah, she says, throwing flour and salt
into a large silver bowl.
I don't measure with cups.
I just know by my hands.
Just a little like this is right, see?
You young people always ask those kinds of questions,
she says, thrusting her arms into the dough
and turning it over and over again.
The table trembles with her movements.
I watch silently and this coffee
is good, strong, and fresh.
Outside, her son is chopping wood.
His body an intense arc.
The dull rhythm of winter is the swinging
of the ax and the noise of children squeezing
in with the small size of wind through the edges
of the windows.
She pats and tosses it furiously,
shaping balls of warm, soft dough.
There, we'll let it rise, she says, sitting down now.
We drink coffee and there is nothing
like the warm smell of bread rising on a windy, wood
chopping afternoons.
This is a poem called Last Year the Piñons were Plentiful.
And earlier today, I told a story.
The story behind this one, which is altogether
a different story.
But I wrote it in this form so I wouldn't get into trouble.
So last year the piñons were plentiful.
It took only late night phone call, listening and laughing
and the bedroom dark.
Her husband was lying right there,
but one-sided conversations never make sense.
And it made no sense right from the beginning.
The blue moonlight slid down the long center curve of his back
as he got up to take a drink of water.
After the phone call, she had snow-laced dreams,
where she was trying to catch the dark horse
and the other watch chuckling under his breath.
She smelled chamisa when she woke
and knew what had happened.
Far away, the other was going to feed the horses
beneath Toadlena mountain, the air
was heavy with rain scent, sage, and rabbit brush.
But here, the morning light bolted
into the room in streaks, where her nightgown was
a rumpled heap under the bed.
And she remembered only the phone call
and the time she followed him into the trading post,
a skinny dog at her heels.
He bought her a Coke and they sat on the dusty steps outside,
not even talking.
The sun was hot and sticky.
Fine dirt settling on them.
That was when he said, it's better here in the spring.
Maybe you'll come back then.
As she drove off, she saw him in the rearview mirror
mounting the dark horse.
That was how it was that day.
Here she cleaned the house thoroughly.
And at noon, he called again saying, "Come on out.
The clouds are still real low in the mornings, but it warms up.
We can ride over the mountain if you want."
And she did.
"I have no choice.", she told herself,
leaving her nightgown on the floor and her husband waiting
at lunch.
She took the next Trailways to Gallup, a radio
and a can of coffee.
People saw them at the trading post
at Newcomb reading the bulletin board.
They left on the dark horse toward two gray hills
late in the afternoon and weren't seen again that spring.
"It doesn't make sense", her husband said.
She seemed happy.
But happiness had nothing to do with it.
And years from now, her grandchildren
will understand saying, back then, those things always
happened.
That was last year, the piñons were large and the winter
so cold, so cold.
Beneath Toadlena mountain, the white desert shining with snow.
I'm working on a project for the city of Phoenix,
and it has to do with the new expressway that
recently opened.
I think it opened in December.
It's the Hohokam Expressway.
In order to put in that expressway,
they had to excavate and remove hundreds
of remains of Hohokam people who used
to live there centuries ago.
So my part in this difficult project
is to document and commemorate the existence of the people
that live there at one time.
And so this is a prose piece that is about meeting with--
meeting with a medicine man in that area and just what--
so the-- it's a part of that whole series.
Conversations at Gila River Art Center.
We met on a spring Saturday at a restaurant for breakfast
and talked for hours.
The morning was warm and the sky a bright blue emptiness.
There's that mountain north of here, he said.
You passed it on-- you passed it driving over.
We've always been told not to climb it, and we never have.
It has a tempting and dangerous face.
And so it seems like people who aren't from here
can't resist trying to climb it.
One guy was looking at it and asked, you ever climb it?
Nope, I said.
Too dangerous.
And the voice that's talking in here is the medicine man.
Actually, there are spirits who live there.
And some of the most sacred places to our people
are located there.
At certain times, the medicine men
will go up to make offerings or to receive blessings.
They're the only ones who can go up there.
The kids around here know this too.
Maybe they don't understand exactly why
it's forbidden to them, but they know what the phrase--
and then he said a phrase in his own language.
What that phrase means, it's something to be respected
and something to be feared.
Anyway, this guy has to meet this challenge head on.
So he gets ready in a couple of days later.
Tells me he's going up so that somebody will know where he is.
I wished him luck and told him again
that I thought it wasn't a good idea.
He smiles and leaves anyway.
A few days later, I saw him and he was on crutches.
He had slipped before he reached the top and fractured his leg.
He was kind of embarrassed, but he wasn't the only one
that that happened to.
The holy people take care of themselves, they do.
Just as they take care of us.
So I really like these old stories
and always feel good when someone wants to hear them
and to know about what we believe in and what we know.
That's the Indian way to sit and tell stories together.
Each tribe is the same and the story is different.
It's a good thing this storytelling.
As we were finishing our breakfast,
his daughter came in with her two small children.
She had come to teach her class in basket weaving
in another part of the center.
She was surprised by the enrollment
and pleased that so many women wanted
to learn the old tradition of making baskets.
When she was a child, she asked to learn
and her grandmother taught her.
In preparation for the class, she
had gone out to gather the plants needed and soaked them
overnight in large metal tubs.
She would tell the women where the plants were
and when to gather them.
This morning, the dozen or so students
followed her across the patio to their classroom.
They were mostly Indian, maybe one or two non-Indian women.
They followed her, this 23-year-old Pima woman.
And her two and her little children
ran to catch up, pouting, unwilling to share
their mother.
As I left the center, there were two tourists coming in.
And across the road, people were at the store
talking and laughing.
Some were setting up tables facing the highway,
getting ready to sell jewelry, beadwork, tamales,
and fry bread.
There were huge jars of dill pickles
and swivel racks of colored syrup for snow cones.
Patio umbrellas were going up.
The sun was already overhead and there weren't any trees nearby.
I pull over and went to see what they had to say.
Bet you're Navajo, one guy said to me.
Bet you're Hopi-- I'm sorry.
Bet you're Hopi, one guy said to me.
I just laughed and said, Navajo.
Hey, he said, I could have start a war here.
Everybody nearby laughed, and I told them where I was from
and I was doing some writing for the city.
A woman told me about her son who had married a Navajo
and now lived in Santa Fe.
It seems so far away, she said.
We hardly go up there.
But at least they come back here every once in a while.
It is far, I said.
I told her about my parents and how
I worried about them sometimes.
They're getting old and get sick more often now, I added.
That's the way it is, she said.
There are a lot stronger than we think though.
And we smiled.
I bought a fry bread and Diet Coke
and started back to the car.
Come on back-- come back again.
We're always here selling and getting rich, one of the women
said laughing.
Tell everyone at Hopi we said hi, they tease me again.
As I drove back to Phoenix, the traffic
was heavy and the air, hot.
Heat wave shimmered above the freeway.
Off to the side, there were the huge plants
used for basket making and the mountain, a looming dusky
purple.
In a matter of minutes, I was part of the traffic rushing
into the city.
The roar of cars and planes above pushed inside the car
where the radio sang out loud and I drove on alone
except for my silent breathing.
Later in the day at the Pueblo Grande site,
as I looked over the place that had been excavated
and the huge cement pillars now installed there,
the voices and stories from earlier in the day
stayed with me.
The construction crews had left the equipment parked
in neat rows and the ground beneath
was a dry brown color, newly dug and the presence
of powdery pieces, bone shards, clothing fibers,
or any other signs of a former village were imperceptible.
Yet I knew that they had been there.
We had seen the small paper sacks of excavated
remains standing upright in the bright sun.
And we stood in the middle of their homes all these centuries
later.
The silence was heavy and I sat down under the trees,
still waiting to talk, laugh, and share stories.
We're all still here, I said to the Hohokam Ki,
whose homes and burials were disturbed
and we are still the same.
There are memories and stories too powerful
for something as new as cement and asphalt to destroy.
The words I had entered that morning
were the prayers and hopes that they
had thrown ahead for all of us.
It is the same now.
We pray several times each day for ourselves, our children,
our ancestors, and our grandchildren.
We call it throwing our prayers.
Our prayers are thrown seven generations ahead.
This is what this place known as the Hohokam Expressway
embodies for some of us.
This is a poem called It is Night in Oklahoma.
The used air in a plane and the still air in the wide terminal
is no different than the vast skies shared
with other silent travelers.
To most people who are leaving, it's
nothing more than a hollow roar than an empty runway space.
It is night in Oklahoma when he walks toward me,
his voice low and eyes brimming from that raw place inside.
His brother's death is a jagged sigh flooding him.
It has taken him back to his birth, the first phases
he knew, mother and Tommy.
The long, humid afternoons of his boyhood trapping crawdads
and wrestling washed over him.
How sad the dirt stained pants.
The old TV shows flickering black and white,
the days of high school are framed with longing.
Now on long football afternoons, his step will waver.
When he gets up to call his brother, then remembers.
He will walk nearer me as we journey
through music-filled stores, hugging bright secret packages.
All around us, listening tinsel and forced cheer.
There are no words for this anguish, his brother is dead.
From the airport, I drive back through
the dark, frozen streets squeezing his hand.
He sits beside me, his breath ragged wet.
We crossed the black yard slick with ice and enter the house.
My steps are small and frightened.
Inside, we circle the room with corn pollen,
sprinkling oh, words, sprinkling oh, pleas
for help and wholeness.
Nihi Diyin, nihíká ilyeed.
Nihíká ilyeed, nihi Diyin.
We move the furniture around straight in the room
as his people have always done.
These rooms gather us in, yet hold
the empty space left by death.
Later he holds me in the darkness.
He holds me breathing into my hair.
My hair thawed from the ice night air
and damp with exhausted sighs.
As his smooth hands slide down my back and legs,
I suddenly feel drunk.
But then I recognize the frightening dizziness
that grief causes.
Slowly, slowly, we move into each other, that warm familiar
slickness.
It seems all we have in the torn winter ahead.
In other rooms, perhaps trouble spirits hover in the dark air,
above the same old furniture, above sleeping limp bodies,
and above the covered pans of food on the counters.
But in here we breathe each other's skin,
move to feel our pulses beating.
And this is the only reassurance of our own tender lives,
our own tender lives.
I'm going to read this.
This is a series of pet stories.
So I'll read one.
There's several in the series.
And this section doesn't really have a title to it yet,
but it's from the series.
At home, they say Navajo shouldn't buy or sell dogs.
Why would you buy a family member anyway, they ask.
Navajo dogs are expected to be responsible.
My father's dogs respond only to Navajo
and don't understand English.
They are courteous, extending their paws when someone says
yá'át'ééh to them.
Some years back, we had a dog named Sandoval.
After old man Sandoval who lived South of us.
My father pronounce his name Sando-wool.
Because that was what he called his old friend.
Sandoval would ride by our house on his horse with five
or six dogs running alongside.
He wore a tall black hat and exchanged silent calm waves
with us.
We missed him when he died, when he died.
But at least we had the dog, Sando-wool.
My parents were without any pets for a few weeks
or so because someone or something
was stealing dogs and cats in the farm area where we live.
It was strange and everyone talked about it.
They would speculate and become suspicious
of any unfamiliar vehicles in the area.
Each time I talk with someone in Shiprock,
they told me the pets were gone, and wasn't that just awful?
They even talked about devil worshippers and Satan cults,
but that was just too much to imagine.
We knew that the pets were quite handsome and valuable for
the animal -nappers to resist.
One day my sister was unloading her car.
She had just driven back from work
at [? Toadlena ?] when a blue pickup drove up.
A woman leaned out and said, are you people missing a dog?
Yeah, my sister said, putting everything down.
Well, I know where your dog is, she said.
But first don't ask me my name or where I'm from.
OK, my sister said, growing excited by the minute.
There's a woman by the last name of Tso
who lives at Ojo Amarillo. She's the one that stole your dog.
She sure bragging about it, saying
she stole a good dog from the Tapahonsos.
She's just bragging around up there.
So if you want your dog that's where it is, she said.
That Tso lady's my sister-in-law and we don't get along.
That's why I told you this, she added and drove off quickly.
My mother said after that crime stopper came,
everyone knew about it.
They were out to find that Tso lady.
She was suspected of stealing more than the dog.
An aunt who lives at Ojo Amarillo heard about all this,
and she found out where this woman lived.
She called a Navajo police officer for help.
This officer had also been asking her out.
He said-- he said, in his official capacity,
I'll help you recover your parents' dog.
That night, around 9:00, the officer and my sister
went to the suspect's house.
And a man answered.
And upon seeing my angry aunt and the law said,
go ahead, go on in and get the dog.
Their children watched silently as they walk to the backyard.
There was so no sign of the offending dognapper, the Tso
lady.
So at least they found the dog and took it.
My aunt was sure glad she had some influence with the law
enforcement.
That same night, after 10:00 PM, my aunt and her kids
arrived at my parents' home some 20 miles away.
Who's that?
So late, my mother mumbled, looking out the front window.
My sister, we have something for you and dad,
my aunt said, showing her the dog.
Everyone was happy and they all settled into the kitchen.
They told about how they found the Tso lady
and how they confiscated the dog with the help of the law.
By now, the other sister had come over from next door.
Finally, they all had to leave, the kids at school
the next day.
That night they went to bed happy,
at least to have-- to have at least one dog.
A few days later, my mother called another sister
who had given her Dale, the doberman puppy that was stolen.
She asked, did they all have his ears pinned?
Yes, my sister answered.
Was his tail cut?
My mother asked.
Yeah, my sister answered.
I have the rest of it over here.
She lives on the other side of the Chuska mountains.
Hmm, my mother said.
Was Dale a boy dog?
Chip and Dale are both boys, she said.
Chip was Dale's brother and he remained at my sister's home.
Oh, dear, my mother said.
Your aunt brought the wrong dog back to me.
This one's ears just flop around and he has a long tail.
Joe's been acting like it's a female.
Joe had also been missing and had just appeared
on the porch one morning.
He had just run off.
He wasn't the type of dog to get stolen.
Oh, dear, my mother said.
Joe has a wife.
The last we heard, Joe was happy with Dale
or whoever we thought Dale was.
Then there's this little section about Joe.
There was a dog named Joe.
Once, my mother went out to the porch and yelled out, Yo, Joe!
We were all surprised because we thought
only marines and miners yelled "Yo" allowed
to answer roll call or phones.
And here was my mother saying that all the time to call Joe.
Sometimes he came running when we call, Joe Babe.
And we just laughed and laughed because Joe Babes were
girls at Indian boarding school who teased their hair,
wore lots of mascara, and wore white go-go boots
when that was the style.
One could tell Joe was not the boarding school product.
My mother didn't say "Yo" the way I said it.
She has a much tougher way of saying it.
There's a classic poem called "Leda and the Swan."
And so people are always doing takes on it in different ways.
And so this next poem is, I guess, the Indian answer
to "Leda and the Swan."
It's called "Leda and the Cowboy."
A few months back, when the night sky was darker
than Leda had ever seen, she stepped through the worn door
frame of the queue lounge.
The suddenness of thick, smoky air left her slightly faint.
After that, it was easy enough.
Leda saw him across the damp, just wiped bar.
She did nothing but hold the glance a second too long.
Sure enough, as if she called out his name,
he walked over, a slight smile and straw hat.
Even then as they danced, the things he told her
were fleeting.
Leda a smile and a strange desperation engulfed him.
I have to leave, she said, remembering
that clear empty air outside.
He followed her, holding her shoulder lightly.
And outside, he bent over, his body
an arc in the street light.
And it was clear he didn't know the raw music she lived.
But for now, he's leaning across the table,
smiling and telling Leda things he
wants to take her on a picnic.
It might rain tonight and she can phone him any time.
He thinks he is leaving for a rodeo 400 miles
to the north in a few hours.
His pickup is loaded with saddles, clothes,
and a huge ice chest.
Leda notices the parking lot outside
is stained with oil, twist cigarettes, and small bits
of colored glass.
He leans toward her, hat tilted.
And in that low morning voice says,
he has been tracking her all night.
In this desert city of one million people,
he drove over cool asphalt trails
searching smoky dance halls, small Indian bars,
the good Mexican place that serves until 11.
And when he found her, she was laughing at a table
near the shiny dance floor.
But Leda saw his straw hat and half smile
as he watched from the bar.
When they danced, it was flawless.
He thinks he has done this many times before.
His shirt carried the scent of the hot night breezes outside.
East of here, above the dry fields of the Hohokam Ki,
the stars are sparse.
And as he follows Leda through the stark beauty
of the old stories, he has already
left his own life behind.
So then this leads right into a much, much requested poem
called Raisin Eyes.
So, Raisin Eyes.
I saw my friend Ella with a tall cowboy at the store
the other day in Shiprock.
Later I ask her, who's that guy anyway?
Oh, Luci, she said.
I knew what was coming.
It's terrible.
He lives with me and my money and my car.
But just for a while, he's in AIRCA and rodeos a lot,
and I still work.
This rodeo business is getting to me, you know.
And I'm going to leave him because I
think all this I'm doing now will pay off better somewhere
else.
But I just stay with him and it's hard.
Because he just smiles that way, you know.
And then I end up paying entry fees
and I'm putting shiny, Tony Lamas on layaway again.
It's not hard, but he doesn't know when I'll leave him.
And I'll drive across the flat desert
from red valley and blue morning light straight to Shiprock
so easily.
And anyway, my car is already used
to humming a morning song with Gary Stewart complaining again
of aching and breaking down and out love affairs.
Damn, these Navajo cowboys with Raisin Eyes [AUDIO OUT].
all the time, she said with a little laugh.
This is, in a sense, I guess, it's an epic poem.
It's called In 1864.
Which was the year that over 8,000 Navajos were forced
to walk from Dinétah, which is Navajo country to Bosque
Redondo in Southern New Mexico.
It was about 300 miles that they walked,
and they were held there for four years.
And then the government allowed them to go back and over
2,500 people died of different kinds of diseases
and starvation.
And so the survivors came back in 1868, four years later.
So this is sort of based on that.
While the younger daughter slept,
she dreamed of mountains, the wide blue sky above,
and friends laughing.
We talked as the day wore on, the stories and highway beneath
became a steady hum.
The cedar lines were blurred guide.
As we near to turn to Fort Sumner, I remembered the story.
A few winters ago, he worked as an electrician on a crew
installing power lines on the western plains of New Mexico.
He stayed in his pickup camper, which
was connected to a generator.
The crew parked their trucks together
and built a fire in the center.
The nights were cold and there weren't any trees
to break the wind.
It snowed off and on, a quiet steel blanket.
The land was like he had imagined from the old stories,
flat and dotted with shrubs.
The arroyos and washes cut through the soft dirt.
They were unsuspectingly deep.
During the day, the work was hard
and the men were exhausted.
In the evening, someone went into the nearby town
to eat and drink a few beers.
He fixed a small meal for himself and tried to relax.
Then at night, he heard cries and moans carried by the wind
and blowing snow.
He heard the voices wavering and rising in the darkness.
He would turn over and pray, humming songs
he remembered from his childhood.
The songs returned to him as easily
as if he had heard them that very afternoon.
He sang for himself, his family, and the people whose spirits
lingered on the plains in the arroyos
and in the old windswept plants.
No one else heard the thin wailing.
After the third night, he unhooked his camper,
signed his time card, and started the drive north
to home.
He told the guys, sure, the money's good,
but I miss my kids and it sure gets lonely out here
for a family man.
He couldn't stay there any longer,
the place that contained the pain and cries
of his own relatives, the confused and battered spirits
of his own existence.
After we stopped for a Coke and chips,
the storytelling resumed.
My great aunt had always started the story saying,
you are here because of what happened
to your great grandmother long ago.
They began rounding up the people in the fall,
some were lured into surrendering by offers of food,
clothes, and livestock.
So many of us were starving and suffering that year
because the bilagáanas kept attacking us.
Kit Carson and the army had burned all the fields
and they killed our sheep right in front of us.
We couldn't believe it.
I covered my face and cried.
All my life, we had sheep.
They were like our family.
It was then I knew our own lives were in great danger.
We were all so afraid of that man, Red Shirt, and his army.
Some people hid in the foothills of the Chuska mountains
and in Canyon de Chelly.
Our family talked it over and we decided to go to this place.
What would our lives be without sheep, crops, and land?
At least we thought we would be safe from gunfire
and our family would not starve.
The journey began and the soldiers were all around us.
All of us walked, some carried babies.
Little children and the elderly stayed
in the middle of the group.
We walked steadily each day, stopping only
when the soldiers wanted to eat or rest.
We talked among ourselves and cried quietly.
We didn't know how far it was or even where we were going.
All that was certain was that we were leaving Dinétah, our home.
As the days went by, we grew more tired.
And soon the journey was difficult for all of us,
even the military.
And it was they who thought all this up.
We had such a long distance to cover.
Some old people fell back, fell behind,
and they wouldn't let us go back to help them.
That was the saddest thing to see.
My heart hurt so to remember that two women were
near the birth of their babies and they had a hard time
keeping up with the rest.
Some army men pulled them behind a big rock
and we screamed out loud when we heard the gunshots.
The women didn't make a sound, but we cried out loud
for them and the babies.
I felt then that I would not live through all this.
When we crossed the Rio Grande, many people drowned.
We didn't know how to swim.
There was hardly any water deep enough to swim in at home.
Some babies, children, and some of the older men and women
were swept away by the river current.
We must not ever forget their screams and the last
we saw of them, hands, a lake, or their hair floating.
There were many who died on the way to Hwééldi.
All the way we told each other, we will be strong as long
as we are together.
I think that was what kept us alive.
We believed in ourselves and the old stories
the holy people had given us.
This is why, she would tell us, this
is why we are here, because our grandparents prayed and grieved
for us.
The car hums steadily and my daughter is crying softly,
tears stream down her face.
She cannot speak.
Then I tell her that it was at Bosque Redondo they
learned to use flour dough.
And now fry bread is considered to be the traditional Navajo
bread.
It was there they acquired an eternal appreciation
for strong coffee.
The women learned to make long-tiered calico skirts
and fine velvet shirts for men.
They decorated their dark velvet blouses
with silver dimes, nickels, and quarters.
They had no use for money then.
It is always something to see silver
flashing in the sun against dark velvet and black, black hair.
I'm going to do one--
do one short one and then finish up
with a combination of poetry and song.
This is a poem called Hills Brothers Coffee.
Which my uncle calls the Catholic coffee--
the Catholic's coffee.
My uncle is a small man.
In Navajo, we call him shidá'í, my mother's brother.
He doesn't know English, but his name in the white way
is Tom Jim.
He lives a mile or so--
he lives about a mile or so down the road from our house.
One morning, he sat in the kitchen drinking coffee.
I just came over, he said.
The store is where I'm going to.
He tells me about how my mother seems to be
gone every time he comes over.
Maybe she sees me coming then runs and jumps in her car
and speeds away, he says smiling.
We both laugh just to think of my mother jumping in her car
and speeding.
I pour him more coffee and he spoons some sugar and cream
until it looks almost like a chocolate shake.
Then he sees the coffee can.
Oh, that's that coffee with the man
in a dress like a church man.
Oh, that's the one that does it for me.
Very good coffee.
I sit down again and he tells me, some coffee has no kick.
But this one is the one.
It does it good for me.
I pour us both a cup.
And while we wait for my mother, his eyes crinkle with the smile
and he says, yes.
Ah, yes.
This is the very one.
Putting in more cream and sugar.
So I usually buy Hills Brothers Coffee.
Once or sometimes twice a day, I drink a hot coffee
and it sure does it for me.
So I'll end with this one.
It's called the Motion of Songs Rising.
Even though it's not really winter yet here,
it's winter at home, so we're OK because this is a winter thing.
The Motion of Songs Rising.
The October night is warm and clear.
We are standing on a small hill.
And in all directions around us, the flat land
listens to the songs rising.
The holy ones are here dancing.
The Yeis are here.
In the west, Shiprock looms above the desert.
Tsé bit'a'í, old bird-shaped rock, she watches us.
Tsé bit'a'í, our mother who brought the people here on her
back, our refuge from the floods long ago.
It was worlds and centuries ago, yet she remains here, Nihimá,
our mother.
This is the center of the night, and right in front of us,
the holy ones dance.
They dance surrounded by hundreds of Navajos.
Diné t'óó àhayóí.
We listened and watched the holy ones dance.
Yeibicheii, grandfather of the holy ones.
[SINGING]
They dance moving back and forth.
Their bodies are covered with white clay
and they wave evergreen branches.
They were hides of varying colors through coyote swinging
as they sway back and forth.
All of them dancing ancient steps.
They dance precise steps our own emergence onto this land.
They dance again the formation of this world.
They dance for us now, one precise swaying motion.
They dance back and forth, back and forth.
As they are singing, we watch ourselves recreated.
[SINGING]
Éí ałts'íísgíí shił nizhóní.
The little clown must be about six years old.
He skipped slightly about, waving his branches around.
He teases people in the audience,
tickling their faces if they look too serious or sleepy.
At the beginning of each dance, when
the woman walks by to bless the Yeis, he runs from her.
Finally, after the third time, she
sprinkles him with corn pollen and he skips off happily.
'Éí shił nizhóní.
Yeis are dancing again.
Each step, our own strong bodies.
They are dancing the same dance thousands of years old.
They are here for us now, grateful for another harvest
and our own good health.
The roast corn I had this morning
was fresh, cooked all night, and lift out of the ground
this morning.
It was steamed and brown just right.
[SINGING]
They are dancing.
And in the motion of songs rising,
our breathing becomes the morning moonlit air.
The fires are burning below as always.
We are restored.
I want to thank you all for coming.
And I really want to thank the people out
in the lobby who are very patient people.
Thank you.
Hágoónee'.