[APPLAUSE]
If anybody has any questions about--
you guys are probably tired.
But if anyone has any questions that they
want to ask about what I read or things in the anthology
or any kinds of questions, I'm happy to answer questions.
Yeah?
How long have you been writing?
Oh, I've been writing ever since I was a little kid.
I've been writing seriously since about 1967.
So.
Yes?
Was that your song, or was that an old song that you--
No, it's mine.
One thing I try not--
I don't know whether it is, I try not to do it,
but what I'm interested in is new things.
Things that are my own, that come out
of a feeling or a sense of the traditional songs.
Not that it's wrong to use the ritual songs
and ceremonial songs and things like that,
but I'd rather come up with my own kinds of things
and say that they're from the same feeling, you know?
Actually, to me that works, because it's not
only elemental, it means that you
are continuing the tradition with the way
that it-- it comes alive that way
rather than being merely a nostalgic echo.
I mean, you bring [INTERPOSING VOICES]
[INAUDIBLE] and that's [INAUDIBLE]
Glad you see it that way.
Any other?
I was sort of worried--
when I wrote the story, the character's a Navajo woman.
And I said to somebody, when people studied it and read it,
they should read it as an attempt by a Pueblo person
to create a Navajo character.
There are certain things there, like about the death thing
and stuff like that.
But I thought to myself, well, that's who I am,
and I really wanted to do this woman.
And I would never claim that my Navajo woman
was a Navajo-Navajo woman.
She's a Laguna woman's version of a Navajo woman.
And that was one thing.
Sometimes I'm a little timid about doing
that, but anyhow, that was just something I wanted to say.
Are there any other questions?
Yeah?
Have you had a chance to get to know the Indigenous
people of Alaska at all?
The Indigenous people?
Yeah.
I've made some friends up there.
They're town Indian people.
And my experience has always been, with growing up
on the reservation--
I'm not sure whether the differences I see
are because these are urban people or--
I'm sure part of it, though, is that the Tlingits
and Haidas and Tsimshians are a different sort of people.
I think I'd have to be there a long time to really say,
oh yeah, I know.
I mean, I have some friends and acquaintances
but to get a real feeling for that land
and for the cultures--
it takes a long time, I think.
Yeah?
Do you write everything in English?
Yeah, pretty much.
Simon Ortiz and I talk about this all the time.
There's a challenge to working with the English
and coming up with something based
upon the way we speak English at home,
with the different rhythms and so on,
to come up with something a little bit
different than your usual kind of English.
The only place where I sometimes--
beginnings and endings of "The Chance," which
are not translatable anyway.
Those are nice.
And I like to make up my own.
There's some in this novel I'm writing now,
but yeah, I work in English.
Anybody else have-- Yeah?
I just think that that was such a beautiful piece, so--
Oh.
Thank you.
I'm glad you thought so.
Thank you.
OK?
[APPLAUSE]
I should do a couple of things that Leslie won't do.
And that's plug what she's written.
The anthologies that she's referred to
is a thing called The Man to Send Rain Clouds, which
many of you've probably seen.
It's edited by Kenneth Rosen and published
by the Viking Press in 1974.
She has a book of poems published by the Greenfield
Press, is it?
Yeah.
Titled Laguna Woman, and that was also published in 1974.
So I'd like to thank Leslie for being here
on behalf of the AmerIn club and the American Indian Studies
Department, which sponsored her visit.
And I'd like to thank you for coming.
[APPLAUSE]