At present, there are 187 Native American languages, 149 of them
threatened by extinction.
Languages die if the people who speak them die.
As we all know, the English-only boarding schools,
established by the US government,
assisted this process of loss in North America
by punishing students for using their native languages.
One Indian woman from British Columbia,
when asked if she had difficulty communicating
when she left school, answered, oh, yeah,
I had a real difficulty, mostly in pronouncing words, thinking
in Indian, that sort of thing.
Tonight, I'm truly honored to introduce you
to Tohono O'odham poet, scholar, and educator, Ofelia Zepeda.
And associate professor of linguistics at the University
of Arizona.
She has worked extensively with Papagos and Pimas
in the areas of linguistics, language teaching,
and curriculum development.
She's the author of a Papago grammar,
making a significant contribution
to a language for which a written system was
developed only in the 1960s.
She has contributed as author and editor
to two books of Native American literature.
The South Corner of Time, an anthology of Hopi, Navajo,
Papago and Yaki tribal literature.
"When it Rains," an anthology of Papago and Pima
poetry, and as editor of the newly released anthology,
"Home Places, Native American writing from Sun Tracks."
When her collection, "Ocean Power, Poems from the Desert"
came out in 1995.
It was a significant event, not only for the clarity, wit,
and power of her imagery, but also
for the fact that the book is the first written literary work
by an individual in Tohono O'odham and English,
a landmark in Native American literature,
and an act of cultural preservation.
Her new book, "Earth Movements," will
be coming out from Tucson's Kore Press with a CD.
It gives me great pleasure to welcome Ofelia Zepeda.
Thank you, Alison.
I also want to thank the Poetry Center
for inviting me to participate in their reading series
as their local participant.
And of course, I want to thank all of the wonderful supporters
of the Poetry Center as well.
What I'd like to do this evening is just read a little bit
from the collection that Alison mentioned,
the Ocean Power collection.
And then what I'd like to do is read from the newer collection
that Kore Press is working on.
And the collection from Kore Press
is primarily a bilingual collection.
The pieces are in O'odham and English as well.
So anyway, I'd like to read from that one specifically
this evening.
But let me start with something that
is sort of in between these two collections in a way,
and it is a bilingual piece.
And I decided to put it in--
I had sort of talked to myself if not doing the rain set.
But since it rained so nicely this evening,
I thought I would go ahead and do one anyway.
But anyway, let me go ahead and start with that one
and then I'll go to the original set
that I had planned on doing.
And in O'odham, I call this one--
well, it's just a little phrase that says,
B ‘o ‘e-a:g maṣ ‘ab him g ju:kǐ. B ‘o ‘e-a:g maṣ ‘ab him g ju:kǐ.
It loosely translates as, it is heard, or it's rumored,
or it is said that the rain's coming.
So we know that it wasn't a rumor.
B ‘o ‘e-a:g maṣ ‘ab him g ju:kǐ. Ṣag wepo mo pi woho.
Nañpi koi ta:tk g jeweḍ mat am o i si ka:ckad c pi o i-hoiñad c o ñendad.
Ṣag wepo mo pi woho.
Nañpi koi ta:tk g da:m ka:cim mat o ge s-wa’usim s-we:ckad. Ṣag wepo mo pi woho.
Nañpi koi ta:tk g hewel mat s-hewogim o ‘i-me: Ṣag wepo mo pi woho.
Nañpi koi hewegid g s-wa us jeweḍ mat g hewel ‘ab o ‘u’ad.
Ñia, heg hekaj o pi ṣa’i woho matṣ o ju:.
"Someone said, or else it's rumored,
that it's going to rain.
I think it is not so, because I have not
felt the Earth in the way that it holds still in anticipation.
I think it is not so, because I have not
felt the sky become heavy with moisture of preparation.
I think it is not so, because I have not felt the winds
move with their coolness.
I think it is not so, because I have not
inhaled the sweet, wet dirt the winds bring.
So there is no truth that it is going to rain."
That's the only rain one we have.
There's a little set in here in the book
that I rarely ever read.
And so I'm going to do about three pieces from that section.
And I believe the section has to do-- well,
I identify it as the part that deals with people,
and so forth.
The section on the people is the one
that is a little section about women's hair or other people's
hair, I suppose, but I envisioned them
as being women's hair.
And so the first one I want to read
is called Her Hair is her Dress.
And this is partially true events
about a woman who collected her hair her whole life.
Any piece of hair that she combed from her brush,
she pulled out and kept it.
When her hair was cut, she kept it all her adult life.
And she did live to be a little over 100 years old, about 105.
And in her room, that was her space,
she had all these Gunny sacks of hair
in the corner from her whole life,
because she lived there all her life.
And she told me about those Gunny sacks of hair one day.
And she said that she believed that she
didn't want to leave any of her hair any place that--
or she thought that she would have to go back and collect
after she died.
Anyway, so she made sure she knew where it all was.
So this is about that woman.
And then part of it is about how you work with hair
when you comb hair, and when you part your hair,
and how you know your part is straight.
So Her Hair is her Dress.
"She lived to be over 100 years old.
She told her children, when I die, make a pillow for me
out of my hair.
She had saved her hair all those years.
She used to say, I don't want to be
scratching through the ashes looking for my hair.
In the end, her hair did rest on her pillow of hair.
She pulls and twists, braiding, talking, pulling words down
the length of the hair.
Make the part straight.
Be sure she is in balance.
Follow the path to the rabbit's nest,
the place at the base of the skull, that private place that
is hers alone.
The other place, where the heartbeat
is visible through the skin.
A tender place, vulnerable.
Hit her there, her knees buckle and she
falls face down at your feet.
A place so tender, only a baby rabbit might sleep."
And that's what they call that little spot back there.
Thought, gosh, rabbits nest.
And we all have one at a time.
That's the direction you're supposed to head
when you part your hair.
And so your part is supposed to be straight.
However, sometimes you rabbit's nest is slightly off-center,
and your part will end up off-center
if you do follow the rabbit's nest.
And then this one also is, again,
like I said because her immediately
associated with women.
The one called "Stolen Hair" is also based on a true event.
And this was one that happened to me.
Someone cut my hair without my knowing it
at the Fiesta de Los Vaqueros parade about 15 years ago.
They did that.
Somebody cut it and I didn't notice it until way later.
So of course we had to cut it some more to get it even.
Anyway, so this is kind of from that event.
Stolen Hair.
"It happened at the rodeo parade.
Someone cut her hair.
Someone, a crazy person, a witch maybe.
Took her hair for a sacrifice, for decoration,
for a magic charm, perhaps.
Since then, there were other stories.
One woman said someone took her hair in a movie theater.
She said, it was my fault because I like to throw it
over the back of the chair.
Another said, I was riding the Greyhound bus home.
I fell asleep and was dreaming.
I dreamed of how my sister used to comb my long hair for me.
She used to pull it hard.
When I awoke, I found over 12 inches gone.
These women will search the ashes for their hair
when they leave this Earth."
So we know what we'll be doing when we leave,
looking for our hair.
But that's true, when that happened to me,
I mentioned to some Indian women, some Navajo women
around campus.
And then they started telling me stories about their hair.
So be careful where you hang your hair.
And then finally this one is the little O'odham ladies
out on the reservation.
Several years ago, a colleague and I from anthropology
did a dialect study out on the reservation,
and all our participants were men and women
over 55 years old, because it was a language study.
And we still love visiting with the older women.
In fact, we had trouble finding older men.
Women were eager to work with us,
but the men were being shy or else just low in number,
just the mortality rate of Indian men.
So we used to notice how these women would fix their hair when
we'd come to visit them, because they'd
get all nice and dressed up just so that we
could sit there under their ramada and interview them.
But they had this collection of nice hairpins in their hair.
So this is that one.
This is real short.
It's just called Hairpins.
"They glitter like broken glass on black asphalt.
Dime store hairpins of clear plastic,
rhinestones, glass diamonds, and multicolored aluminum strips.
Little hairpins, plastic combs are placed
at intervals around her hair.
They glisten, sparkle, throwing light all around her,
giving her a halo."
Anyway those were the women.
I want to invite the people that are standing.
If you want to sit down.
We're going to be here for a little while.
Please sit down.
This first one is one of a piece that I've been working on
for quite some time.
And it's a bit long.
I think it's sort of a long piece now,
but I think it's going to get longer.
So I sort of stopped it at a point for you.
But at one point, I've been sort of thinking about women
and how they handle things like dirt.
And I've come across women, and we've talked about dirt.
And I've come across women who still gather plants, potatoes,
and things like that, wild potatoes, wild plants.
And it's interesting how their hands
look because they do that kind of work every now and then.
Anyway, I've been sort of paying attention
to those things about women.
The other thing that I've been doing
is I've been tasting dirt.
I eat a lot of dirt for different reasons.
We're given dirt when we're first born
and at different stages of our life.
But between those different stages,
you can taste or eat dirt, if you so desire or have a craving
or whatever.
But anyway, I've been tasting dirt
in different places of the state.
Just that where we go, I've tasted different levels
of the Grand Canyon, I think.
The different geologic phases.
They have different flavors.
I've tasted the dirt at the different ruins
up on the northern part of the reservation, and so forth.
Because they are from different periods of time,
just to see what they taste like.
Anyway, they're quite distinct.
So anyway, this one came from that, the business about dirt.
So more people came in.
If you want to find a seat.
You get to sit right in front.
OK, it's nice to see you guys.
You get stuck on the other side of the washer.
Anyway, so I'm just calling it Dirt.
"It seems lately, I've been craving dirt.
I long to see the way it lays on freshly turned fields,
to see it clinging to equipment that
digs deep beneath the surface.
I not only long to see it, but to taste it.
I taste it through my nostrils, when suddenly, dry dirt
becomes wet from a garden hose.
It seems that is not enough.
I smell the dirt and swallow, a sympathetic sensory reaction.
A Hopi friend once told me that Hopi children
lick the sides of Adobe houses.
I know many women, when cleaning dried beans search out
the tiny pieces of dirt, place them on their tongue,
and let them melt. Old women smokers drop ashes
so daintily from their cigarettes, onto their palm,
onto their tongue.
I walk through a hardware store.
I find myself in the foliage of the garden section.
Bougainvilleas, Mexican bird of paradise,
oleander, pyracanthas, rose bushes, all kinds of acacias,
don't make an impression.
Instead, I am attracted to the freshly watered dirt.
Mixed together, it runs down the sides
of five and 10-gallon buckets.
From the drain holes, the mixture
makes the trail onto the cement.
I watch it run into cracks and seems to settle in dry.
As I walk through the garden area,
I am further drawn in the direction of the center
of the garden shop world.
The potting soils, mixtures, and bags of fertilizer.
Their aroma is intensified by the humidity of the plants.
I feel its warmth.
The fertility is strangely comforting.
Doing electrical wiring in our house,
we bore holes into the adobe walls.
Rivers of dry dirt began to flow.
The house is over 30 years old.
So I know the dirt is clean.
When the opportunity arose, I wet my finger,
and I lifted the dirt, and put it on my tongue.
It tasted the way I thought it would.
A woman once told me, when we were children
we would suck the syrup from ocotillo blossoms,
syrup normally only accessible to hummingbirds, bees,
and bats.
She said, we gather the blossoms and set them
so the syrup would collect in a little puddle in the soft dirt.
And then we ate it.
It was just a little dirt, and it was clean dirt.
I know what she means by clean dirt.
There are many who think they know dirt, clay,
mud by other restructurings.
But potters, cement workers, and anyone
else who claims an occupation with the stuff,
doesn't know what children know.
They have spent the whole childhood walking
on it uncharred, felt the hard, solid, and smooth wetness.
Children know how unforgiving it can be.
There is no recourse as the dirt makes its way into shoes,
embedding itself into unsuspecting fibers,
causing whites to go brown.
A brown many mothers who pride themselves on the whiteness
of their whites can be thrown into a despair from which they
cannot recover.
It is truly difficult to distinguish
whether cold dirt or hot dirt is harder for kneeling.
Catholic mass celebrated outdoors.
The summer's heat already settles in even at 10:00 AM,
as the faithful endure the kneeling.
And what seems like endless minutes of standing,
feet flattening into the dirt.
All of this before Vatican II.
And in the winter, Christmas midnight mass,
the dark cold dirt floor of a winter solstice
is no friend of a child having to endure
the kneeling of the faithful."
So anyway, let me stop it there.
But like I said, it does go on.
And then of the new collection that I'm doing with Kore Press.
As I said, that is all a bilingual collection.
The pieces are in O'odham and then with English facing.
And I just want to warn the people who
are the English bilingual in the audience that they will notice
that the O'odham, of course, doesn't directly correspond
word by word into English, but the theme and many of the ideas
are the same.
So anyway there's a set within that collection
that I like to think deals with people and personalities.
And so I'll start with that set.
And this one's one that I had been
thinking of for a long time.
And I didn't realize that there were
certain things that had made impressions on me
when I was younger.
And some of these points here are because of adult relatives
that I had, of course, as a child, and how they
behaved at different times.
And so there's one here that's about women, I believe.
And this one about men.
And I'll go ahead and read those for you.
We'll just do the women one.
And let me start with the O'odham form first.
Cem 'al taiccu idam 'u'uwǐ mat hab o ma:skad mo g Patsy Cline k 'eda 'idam hia woho
cem hekid hab cu'ig c o ge s-kowk ta:taḍ. C pi hekid ṣa’i ha'i eñiga g s-ke:g ṣuṣk.
Heg 'a'i s-ap cekake mo ḍ tennys gahu ha-u'u Yellow Front t-am.
C 'eḍa 'id an ñeid mo s-wegǐ maskal ipuḍ, s-to:ta wo:pda mo ḍ s-moik hogǐ,
s-toha maskal an wuḍṣc e-kuswo 'an. K eḍa 'idam 'u'uwǐ hia woho hab cu'ig
c aṣ hejel ha-nantoḍ g e-i'ipuḍ. Pi o ha-wopton aṣ g si:spakuḍkaj an o si:sisc. Ge s-o'i g lo:ba.
C heg an 'al ñeid, cem 'al taicu mat o wepo ma:skad c o s-kukulwiñ mo'o, c o s-wepegǐ ce:ceñ, s-ap o 'u:wǐ.
Kc 'idam 'u'uwǐ hia woho hab cu'ig c ce'ecewǐ mo'o, c aṣ ge hihitpaḍag mo ge s-kowk, 'imhu' i hugkam na:naggia.
C heg an ñeid c taiccu mat hab o 'al ma:skad.
"To be like Patsy Cline, yet the women seem to be all the same.
Thick wide feet, no pretty, smart shoes as possessions.
They are destined to canvas shoes,
tennys from yellow front.
And they look at this one, the one who sports a red silk
dress with fringes, white calf skin boots, a white scarf
around her neck.
Yet the women seem to be the same, homemade dresses
with no buttons.
Instead, safety pins for holding her together.
The material, a loud print for everyone to hear.
And they look at this one, curled hair, red lips,
appearing like she always smells pretty.
Yet the women seem to be on the same, horse long braids, braids
that hang down trying to reach those dreams."
Anyway, that's about those women.
And then sort of the counter part to this is the one on men.
And this is the one about that are about my male adult
relatives.
And in O'odham, the title is Matpǐ wuḍ o cem s-ke:gcu.
And the gloss is something like evidently
or supposedly the handsome one.
Matpǐ wuḍ o cem s-ke:gcu. S-ap u:wǐ g mo'o g huhudakuḍ, Waikk Hiosig. S-ap u:wǐ g ki'iwi, spearmint.
S-ke maskal mo ge s-uam an wudṣc e-kuswo an. Ge s-moik hogǐ wonam.
S-toha g hemucij kamiṣ mo ge s-to:ta wopton. Ṣaliwij gahu hug mo am 'i-ṣ:ṣonwa g s-cuck wo:pdaj mo ṣa'i si w-wapedkǐ.
The Handsome One.
"The smell of three flowers hair cream, spearmint gum.
A bright yellow scarf around his neck, suede leather hat,
starched white shirt with pearl snap buttons,
new black stiff Levi's ending at his black shiny boots."
Anyway, so those are the men.
And then also from that same collection.
And this one is from the title piece.
And the title piece in O'odham is called Jeweḍ ‘I-Hoi.
Jeweḍ is the noun for Earth or land.
And 'i-hoi is to move to--
not move as in locate or anything like that.
It's a different kind of move.
Anyway, so the Earth moves sort of like of course
as if it were alive.
So it has a certain type of movement.
Jeweḍ ‘I-Hoi.
And so in English, I sort of glossed it as Earth Movement.
So that's the collection.
So anyway, this one, Jeweḍ ‘I-Hoi, this one begins with a phrase
that my mother used to say every now and then,
especially in the morning.
And she would ask us, or she'd ask, and she'd say,
“añ ep ta:tk mat si ‘i-hoi g jeweḍ?"
And literally, it says, did you feel the Earth move?
And I never knew whether she meant
it was like a little bit of a tremor or something like that,
or something else.
And I used to think that she meant
that at some point in the night she felt the Earth actually
rotating on its axis.
So that's the way it begins.
And that is the phrase, Jeweḍ ‘I-Hoi,
that's where that comes from.
And the other part of this piece is certainly
influenced by when scientists claim to have
discovered how stars are made.
So they said stars are born, that they're embryonic.
You know, that they go through some embryonic process.
So I was very intrigued by that.
So that's sort of in here as well.
Well, in this set here, not in this particular one,
but in the set as well.
So anyway so this is about a woman and jeweḍ ‘i-hoi
and Earth movements.
Jeweḍ ‘I-Hoi. Kus hascu hab a:g mat hab o cei, “añ ep ta:tk mat si ‘i-hoi g jeweḍ,
nap pi ṣa’i ta:tk a:pi?” “Pi’a, pi’a.” Ñia, kus hascu hab a:g?
Kutp hems heg hab a:g mat o ṣa e-hai g jeweḍ k o ‘i-hoi a no heg hab a:g mat sikol o memḍad mo g milga:n b a’aga rotation.
Ñia, kutp hems heg hab a:g mo hegai ta:tk. Kutp hems hab e-elid mo an ke:k id jeweḍ da:m c da’a an da:m ka:cim oidc.
Ceṣṣajcug g jeweḍ hab masma mat hemakc g s-melidkam kawyu o ceṣṣajcug. An meḍad c g mo’oj ṣelim an e-wiḍut huhu’u mehidag ku:bs oidc.
S-ke:g hab ma:s. Heg an we:maj wiappoi mo an ko:mcug g taṣ c gahu amjeḍ i-bebhe si alig ta:gio amjeḍ gamhu hukkam hudñig ta:gio.
Ñia, kut hegai maṣ d maṣad ceḍ o odham o si al hehemad matṣ an o bij.
"Riding the Earth.
She said she felt the Earth move again.
I never knew whether she meant she felt a tremor,
or whether it was the rotation of the Earth.
I like to think she felt the rotation, because anyone
can feel a tremor.
And when she felt this, she could
see herself standing on the Earth's surface,
her thick wide feet solidly planted, toes digging in.
Her visualization so strong, she almost
feels her body arch against a centrifugal force
of the rotation.
She sees herself, with her long hair,
floating, floating in an atmosphere of stardust.
She rides her planet the way a child rides a toy.
Her company is the boy who takes the sun on its daily journey.
And the man in the moon smiles as she passes by."
So I think that would be a nice trip
to take every now and then.
Now, this is the one that was certainly influenced
by the way that stars are born.
And that's the title of this.
Hu'u 'At Ma:si, the birth of stars.
And not only was this piece influenced by that information
about how stars are formed, but also
by different journeys that the O'odham
people take in their stories.
And then also journeys that perhaps some of you in here
have taken with this bus company in Mexico that some of us
have done at least once in a lifetime, which
is more than enough.
And the introduction to this collection for Kore Press,
though, is talking about this particular bus line.
And I didn't know how far South they went.
I've taken it from the state of Chihuahua, up to Sonora,
to Nogales.
But in the introduction, I said that it is possible
that they go all the way South down to Tierra Del Fuego.
And some of them look like they go down to Tierra Del Fuego
and back to Nogales in one day.
So it's that kind of bus line.
You know, it's one of those sort of mystical kind of bus lines.
Anyway, so those kinds of trips and journeys
certainly influenced this piece.
And it's been more than 15 years or so
that I've ridden on that bus.
But there are some Greyhound bus lines that are about the same
as well, and I've ridden more Greyhound bus systems also
for a lifetime.
So anyway, that kind of journey is in here as well.
And journeys going to all kinds of strange places
where events have happened and then certainly events
will be happening soon.
And then certainly, I included some stuff here
from a traditional literature about coyote
and how he handles the star making thing.
So this is called Hu'u 'At Ma:si,
Stars are Born.
Hu'u 'at ma:si. Ñeid 'o mat am ma:si g hu'u, mat am e-na:to. Jeweḍ, ku:bs, ṣu:dagǐ, hewel, mehǐ s-gewkam 'an 'e-bei.
'Am hihim c 'amhu hebai 'i ṣoṣ c am ñeid, 'am ñeid mat am ma:si g hu'u. Tres Estrellas de Oro,
o ceṣ 'i:da k ha'ap o me: amai mat g huhugam am ha'ap wo:p. o am ha'ap o wo:p mat 'am 'i-ṣonwua, 'e-na:to 'i:da jeweḍ,
o am ha'ap o wo:p mat 'am o 'i-e-ku:kt, pi e-ha'icuc 'i:da jeweḍ. Ñia, 'am at ma:si g hu'u.
Kutpǐ hems hab cu'ig c o 'al ṣoakdad g ha-je'e mat o ṣa cu: o mat o ṣa wo:p g ma:maḍaj
o mat g ban an has o memeḍa c 'an has ha-gantaḍ. 'Am hihim c 'am heba'i ṣoṣ c 'am ñeid mat 'am ma:si,
'am ñeid mat am ma:si g hu'u.
The Birth of a Star.
"They have seen the place where stars are born.
They are embryonic.
Hydrogen gas, microscopic dust, carbon,
ultraviolet radiation, evaporation, and erosion
in space.
On the journey, and somewhere along the way,
they stopped and saw.
They saw the place where stars are born.
Tres Estrellas de Oro.
Take a ride to that place where the ancestors have gone,
or travel to the place where the Earth was created.
Or travel to the place where the Earth will end.
Or travel to the place where stars are born.
And they wondered if perhaps the mother
cries, if her birth stars burn out, become cold.
And they wondered if perhaps the mother cries, if her birth
stars fall in a shower.
And they wonder if perhaps the mother
cries, if her birth stars are scattered
about and abused by coyote.
On the journey and somewhere along the way,
they stopped and saw.
They saw the place where stars are born."
So I like that one a lot.
I like the way it worked out for me.
In that it included a lot of things
that I had been thinking about.
And with that thing about discovering how stars are made,
it kind of helped me put it together.
And I had been carrying around that thing
about the bus for a long, long time,
and figured out how to use it.
So you might see some more bus ones here pretty soon.
And then of course, we have a little animal section,
which is always my favorite.
Both in the early collection and then, of course, in this one.
I'd like to end with two pieces, one from the collection
and one from the book.
And the one that I want to start with here
is the one about the little coyotes.
And this is the one about the song since the last one ended
with the little coyotes.
At least O'odham and other tribes
say the same thing about how coyote
helped to make the universe, especially
in scattering the stars.
In O'odham, there's one story that says he was hungry
and he went into a shelter where they kept food and so forth.
And he grabbed a container full of different grains and seeds
and so forth.
Sometimes it's corn meal that he dragged out.
And they chased him and he took off,
sort of running about, and sprinkled and sprayed
the cornmeal about.
And so that's what seemed to be our universe and our stars.
So that's why that one ended that way about the stars.
Anyway, this one on coyote, and then the last one on a whole
set of animals.
This one is a song, an O'odham song that this old man, who's
no longer around, a medicine man, saying on a tape recording
that I found at the folklore center.
And I transcribed it and kept it.
And other people have copied it and they sing it.
I don't sing, so I just read them for you.
Well, we labeled it “Ba:ban Ganhu Ge Ci:pia”.
It's just as coyotes moving over there.
But moving--ci:pia, when you move,
it's the way humans move.
Like when you move from one apartment to another,
you have to pack up all your stuff.
And it's not just like sort of taking off.
It's that kind of moving.
So this song sings about coyote and their families,
and how they move from place to place.
Ba:ban ganhu ge ci:pia, ba:ban ganhu ge ci:pia Kut 'am hema meḍk 'am ha-kakk'e, kut 'am hema meḍk 'am ha-kakk'e
Ba: mt o ci:pia? Kut 'am hema meḍk 'am ha-kakk'e Wa ṣa 'an wo:po ṣon 'oidag
Coyotes moving along over there.
Someone go over there and ask them.
Someone go over there and ask them,
where are you guys moving to?
Running along the foothills.
Someone go over there and ask them,
where are you guys moving to?
With babies, new tennis shoes, and her Merle Haggard and Hank
Williams tapes in the Basha's grocery bag.
And his cowboy boots and another, all worldly goods,
packed up, moving.
Kut 'am hema meḍk 'am ha-kakk'e, kut 'am hema meḍk 'am ha-kakk'e Ba: mt o ci:pia?
Someone go over there and ask them.
Someone go over there and ask them,
where are you guys moving to?
Anyway, so that's a little band one.
This final set is one that also I
had been thinking about for a long time.
And some of the imagery and the behavior of animals
that I say happens is based on my seeing animals and watching
animals sometimes, either in their natural setting,
or else in our local museums and such.
And then certainly reading about some of them as well.
And so I sort of put this little set.
That this is some of their behavior or appearances.
And if you don't watch animals, then it
might motivate you to watch animals much more closely,
especially the desert animals.
So anyway, this one is just called [? Da:m ?] Ka:cim Hihimdam.
And [? Da:m ?] Ka:cim Hihimdam, for O'odham people,
they distinguish animals, [? da:m ?] ka:cim hihimdam,
[? da:m ?] ka:cim is the Earth surface or land.
And [? da:m ?] ka:cim hihimdam is anything that walks on land.
And it doesn't literally have to walk on the land.
It's something that normally has to settle or rest every now
and then on land, or on trees, and rocks, or on water.
And then you have animals that fly more than spend time
on the Earth's surface.
So that's how they make those distinctions.
And so in English, the glosses, those that walk the Earth.
And so anyway, this is a group on animals.
And I have butterflies, and bats, and scorpions,
and several others.
Anyway, like I said, I hope you recognize them as well.
Hohogimal. Hohogimal. S-ke:gaj, s-ke:gaj. Cem s-e-hiosignimcud.
"Butterfly, butterfly.
With beauty, with beauty.
The pull to be a flower is forever strong.
Nanakmel. Ṣudagǐ 'am si al cendad. Ge cuhug eḍa 'am ha-nanmek ga ha:ṣañ hiosig.
Bat.
Gently, the water is kissed by moonlight, the courting
of saguaro blossoms.
Nakṣel. Kuṣadk bahǐ, s-ta-e:bidama. Hemhoa 'am hodai weco 'e-estokc, hemhoa.
Scorpion, a crooked tale to be feared.
Surely, all stones must go unturned.
Ciaḍagǐ. S-oam, s-cuk, s-wegǐ. Hejelkam c 'an 'oimeḍ. Ñ-ṣoiga 'o an s-m-ñenhogǐ. Gḍhu si al kokma g jeweḍ c him.
Gila monster, yellow, black, red.
A solitary wonder.
My horse senses you, yet with each movement,
the Earth is embraced.
Cemamagǐ. Pi ṣa:muñhim an oimeḍ. Sikolim, s-kowk, s-muhadagǐ. S-na:k g ñ-ha:l hiosig.
Horned toad, a silent traveler, thickly
around unflattering colors.
Squash blossoms await you.
Hujuḍ. S-wepegihim e-ñeñigid. S-wegǐ totoñ. Cuk totoñ. To:ta totoñ. Wo'o kc ha-ñeñda, 'e-ñeñigid.
Lizard, with lightning strikes, red ants, black ants,
white ants lying in wait, as lightning strikes.
Wipismal. Ñeñe'i 'an himcud. 'Al 'a'an 'an beteñim ñ-i:bdag eḍ.
Hummingbird, moving with songs, little wings
beating in my heart."
Thank you very much.