My name is Larry Evers.
I'm from the English department.
Ofelia Zepeda and I had an idea to do this kind of a series
about a year ago and started talking about it
with various people, and we were fortunate to convince
Rudy Troike who's the acting head of the English department
and Jay Stauss, American Indian Studies,
to support us in organizing this.
Subsequently, a number of other people
helped us out as co-sponsors and I'd
like to mention them, the University of Arizona Poetry
Center, the Center for Creative Photography,
the University of Arizona Library,
and the Inter Tribal Graduate Council.
This is one in a series of readings.
I won't go through the names of the other readers
in this series.
You have a brochure.
We still have brochures left out in the lobby.
So please pick one up.
There is one change that I need to mention tonight.
And Victor Masayesva gave me a call
to tell me that he's going to be in Ecuador
and won't be able to be here for his scheduled reading
so on February 24 that's the bad news.
The good news, and it's a very good news indeed,
is that Ofelia Zepeda has agreed to give a reading that night.
Yeah, I agree.
What we plan to do about this room situation,
let me just take a minute to give you
the story of my week on the phone which brings us back
to this space.
We called all over campus and are
unable to find a larger suitable room for us before the week
after spring break.
So of course, we'll continue to look
and we have been talking with the community
center and the Temple of Music and Art and so forth,
but that raises other issues.
We've been able to pull this off with a lot of goodwill,
a lot of hard work and not very much money.
And if we have to move downtown, we're
going to need money that we don't have right now.
So we'll continue to work on this problem,
but probably what we're looking at
is a situation where we will move over
to the Student Union ballroom the week after spring break.
This is what we expect to happen.
Stay tuned next week.
We expect to move over there for the Jim Welch reading,
for the Scott Momaday reading and for the Leslie
Silko reading at the very least and then see where we are.
That's the plan.
We managed to get a live monitor hooked up out in the lobby.
I realize for those of you who are out there,
it's a gesture, but a gesture that we tried to do something.
We have a reception that follows this.
Last week we ran out of punch in about five minutes.
So we quadrupled our order of lemonade.
So if you sprint out to the lobby after the reading,
you might be able to get a little drink.
Please don't sprint.
What I'd like to do now is turn the mic over
to Ernie who is going to say a few words about the Inter
Tribal Graduate Student Organization.
Hi.
This is really just a commercial and I
ain't going to take a whole lot of your time.
We're really proud to be the co-sponsors
of this poetry and politics, poetics and politics
session here.
Larry was telling you we ain't got
no money the man goes for the whole campus for everybody.
So in order to cover our end of the bargain
when we decided we'd co-sponsor this thing,
they gave us permission to sell stuff.
So see this t-shirt.
All of you walked by him out front
there don't forget to pick one up on your way out.
It would be a great help.
And yeah, pay for it.
And if we can make this thing work,
we can do it again next semester and the semester after
and the semester after and that's
what we'd like to do here.
Also speaking of no money, as you can see,
we're recording these sessions and we keep the tapes
over at the American Indian Graduate Center
over on 7th Street.
We got a problem.
We don't have a VCR or a TV, and we're really
afraid to let anybody borrow the tapes.
How many know about Indian history?
Yeah, well, you know what happens when we let
people borrow things from us.
Traditionally, we hang on to that stuff.
So if anybody's got a VCR and a TV
they'd like to unload so we can all
look at these events, especially the folks
out in the hallway that don't get to come in.
We'd appreciate it.
Thanks for your time.
Proceeds from the sale of the poster by the way
go to the Inter Tribal Graduate Organization.
It's one other commercial that I need to do.
I promised all the good bookstores around town
that I'd give them a plug.
We attempted to arrange to have books for sale
out in the lobby.
So far, we haven't been able to work that one out either.
But ASUA bookstore, Coyote's Voice, Dave Laird's, Books West
Southwest, Haunted, most of the good bookstores in Tucson
are making a special effort to handle works
by all of the writers in our series, including Simon Ortiz.
So I encourage you to get over to one of them
and buy some books to support the writers.
Simon Ortiz comes to us from his home
at Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico.
He's the author of many books, Going for The Rain,
A Good Journey, Fight Back for the Sake of the People,
For the sake of the Land, from Sand Creek which
is still barely in print, there are few copies around,
and others.
The University of Arizona press and the Sun Track series
will be reissuing in a single volume edition
3 of his books with a new introduction this--
we hope this summer, early summer
under the title Woven Stone, so please watch for them.
Simon has recently taken to writing film scripts
and has finished apparently just this week,
this month a piece for an upcoming PBS series
titled Surviving Colombia.
He is an active versatile writer.
Jim Harrison recently wrote about Simon's work in his book
Just Before Dark.
He says this about Simon's poetry,
"It is the kind of poetry that reaffirms your decision
to stay alive."
Simon Ortiz.
Guw'aadzi.
Hello, and I hope everybody is well.
I'm glad to be here to be a part of your evening,
to be a part of this day.
Thank you for making me feel very welcome.
And especially I want to thank the American Indian studies
program at the University of Arizona
as well as the Department of English
and the Inter Tribal Graduate Council and the American Indian
Center here on campus.
It makes me feel very good to know that people want
to listen to the voice of Indian people, Native American people.
To me it means wanting to and a willingness
to listen to the land, culture, and community, the spirit
of this land, the spirit of the Mother Earth
and the creators of the life here.
I will speak poetry that I've been fortunate enough
to write not because I have the ability to use the words,
but because of the power of poetry
that comes to us from out of the Earth, from the wind,
from the sky, from all the directions of North, West,
South, East, above, and from below and all around.
Poetry is the voice that we all speak.
I believe that American Indian people in this hemisphere
are truly wanting to have that voice heard
and be shared with a sense of responsibility and relationship
for what we all have.
And what we all have is a beautiful life
that is given to us from the creators,
from the Mother Earth.
Really it's not just this hemisphere, but from the source
that the Earth is that is all around.
Poetry comes from that.
I'm from Ako, Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico.
What I grew up with I think is a sense of the spirit
that Ako is.
Ako is not only a place on the map,
but it truly is a place within the human soul, the spirit.
And of course what is truly within the Acoma soul
is also truly within the spirit of everyone.
My poetry, the stories come from that source.
It's true that some of that voice
has its source in a traditional sense from ancient stories,
but also it has its source in the contemporary stories
that people are experiencing today.
I want to start off my reading with a beginning from Surviving
Columbus, living the Pueblo story of land, culture,
and community.
It's a TV documentary about the Pueblo Indian people
in the Southwest.
Ako is one of the 19 Pueblos.
The story includes the Hopi of Arizona,
and it's a story that is not only about the 500
years of colonization, 500 years of in quotes "discovery,"
but it's also a story that goes back to the origins of time
as we see it of time and place as we
the Pueblo of the Southwest see it.
Surviving Columbus.
Telling a story is always more than just telling a story.
It is actually enacting the movement, power, significance,
and quality of experience.
One morning recently I was telling my nephew about an old
Acoma homesite, a ruin as such places are too commonly called,
a couple of miles south of where I live in McCartys,
near where he and his wife and children want to ask for land
from the antelope elders, the [? kəətsi ?]..
Not too far from there just below [SPEAKING ACOMA],,
that hill up to it, there's an old place
right there [SPEAKING ACOMA].
There's an old place there.
When I was just a boy, this small, your grandpa
and grandma, me, and others would go in a wagon up to Acoma
to our corn and bean fields to take care of them.
And every time we went by the old place, grandma,
my mother would say that's where the [SPEAKING ACOMA] lives.
And we had to give cornmeal to the old salt woman who
lives at that old place.
You give her a corn meal, she would say, and ask her
to not the wind blows so hard.
That's what she do.
She's the one who takes care of the wind, grandma would say.
As I told that to my nephew Oo, I
remembered that boy who was that small writing
in the back of a wagon.
Telling that story is renewing that experience back then
and also sharing the experience of recalling
that time for my nephew who is looking for a homesite
to build a house for him and his wife and their children.
And the narrative starts.
I always tell a story from the beginning,
Zuni Pueblo elders tell this to their young.
This is the way all things has been.
Creation is mythic and real in time and place.
Creation is the existence of all things, the tiniest flower,
the horizon of Blue Mountains, rain clouds swiftly flowing
mountain streams, snow on the mesas,
the sun and stars, all things.
Pueblo people in their plaza, working in their corn fields,
sitting down to eat, driving to work,
a child playing, the horizon of the Hamish mountains beyond.
Pueblo elders and youth walking together.
All things, [SPEAKING ACOMA].
Creation is present existence in the mythic.
It is not an inexplicable event that
happened countless epochs ago.
Creation is happening today.
The moment of the past is the moment of the present.
This is the story from the beginning
and this is the story of the present.
That's the beginning of Surviving Columbus.
There's another section that I want to--
another-- a poem that I want to read
which has to do with a later time,
later in a historic sense of time.
In 1540-- 1539 really and then 1540 AD
the first Spaniards came to this part of the Southwest.
It was Fray Marcos de Niza coming from Mexico, present day
Mexico.
And you've heard the story of Estevanico
a Moorish slave who was the guide for de Niza who
eventually was killed at Zuni, present day Zuni Pueblo because
of his outrageous behavior and really
because of the fact that he was leading strangers who
had already been heard about who would do harm to the people
and who were the pre invaders.
And the invasion, of course, came in 1540
with Francisco Vasquez de Coronado.
Later on in 1598, Juan de Onate led the colonization
of present day New Mexico from the south
and began to settle the land along the Rio Grande
in New Mexico.
Acoma is west of the Rio Grande.
It's about as you may know 70 miles west of Albuquerque.
From whom I'm descended.
It's on a high tall rock monolith a mesa which rises out
of the flat valley floor, very much a impregnable place,
but Juan de Oñate's soldiers under Vicente de Saldivar
attacked Ako in the winter in January of 1599 and finally did
defeat the Acoma people.
Oñate had ordered the complete destruction of the Pueblo
of Acoma and its people.
Later on bells were brought to Ako
the mission there which was built in the 1620s
to the 1640s.
The legend goes that the bells were
brought in exchange for the children that were taken.
After the battle in 1599 in January,
children were taken from Ako to the south.
They weren't given away.
They were taken to the south, stolen in other words.
And people were enslaved and many died.
In fact, 800 Acomas were killed, were
massacred in those days of war to destroy Ako.
Later when the bell brought and they're still there at Acoma,
they were brought sometime in the 17th century.
But the children are remembered.
In the South wall of the graveyard presently at Ako
or there's a whole and this is the poem
about that memory, which is not only a memory,
but it is the way in which the people remember what happened
and what must be done in order to keep on being alive.
They say the children were taken.
To the South they were taken and they never returned.
Many years later from the South bell for the church
were brought.
They say the [? Kashdura ?] rey, the King sent the bells.
He sent them for the children who were taken to the South.
The bells were for the children who would never return.
In the South wall after wall around the graveyard
there is the hole.
The whole is small.
It is just big enough for a child to climb through.
They say it is for the children who were taken away.
It is a door, the hole for the spirits of the children
to climb through to return to Acoma one day.
The people wait for them.
I want to thank the University of Arizona
press and the Sun Track series that Larry--
Professor Larry Evers edits for publishing
my next book Woven Stone.
It's a reprint of three of my--
three of my previous books, Going
for the Rain, A Good Journey, and Fight
Back for the sake of the people, for the sake of the land.
I want to read a few poems from each of the books.
In Woven Stone.
The creation according to Coyote [AUDIO OUT] First of all,
it's all true.
Coyote he says-- he says this, [? da'a ?],, this way.
Humble yourself motioning and meaning what he says.
You were born when you came from that body
the Earth your black head burst from granite, the ashes cooling
until it began to rain.
It turned muddy then and then green and brown things
came without legs.
They looked strange.
Everything was strange.
There was nothing to know then.
Until later, Coyote told me this--
and he was BSing probably--
two sons were born.
Uyuyayeh and Masaweh.
They were young then and then later they were older.
And then the people were wondering what was above.
They had heard rumors.
But tsushki, Coyote, [SPEAKING ACOMA],,
he was mainly bragging when he said, I think my brothers,
[SPEAKING ACOMA].
The twins then said, let's lead these poor creatures
and save them.
And later they came to light after many exciting, colorful,
and things of adventure, and this is
the life, all these, all these.
My uncle told me all this that time.
coyote told me too, but you know how he is always
talking to the gods, the mountains, the stone
all around, and I you know, you know believe him.
I believe him.
I've been across this country many times.
One of my first extensive trips was to look for Indians.
Can you believe that an Indian looking for Indians,
for an Indian?
It was really a journey, bunk, a myth, the myth of the vanishing
red man, the vanishing Indian.
Growing up in America as a boy you
get-- you got the impression that there were no more
Indians, no more real Indians.
And it was a way in which American society too often
made you feel in order not to believe in yourself anymore.
So in 1969 when I first began to be published,
I had been writing before that for quite a few years,
30,000 years or so, hearing stories and telling stories
30,000 years.
Well, in 1969 I got a grant from the National Endowment
for the Arts, and what I wanted to do with that money
was to look for Indians, in a sense look for myself.
I went straight to the South and East
where all the Indians according to this public American myth
had been wiped out, where they had disappeared.
Oh, there were people who claimed
to be Indian according to this myth
but who didn't speak any Indian, who did not dress like Indians;
therefore, there are no more Indians.
That could not be the truth.
And of course, when I went and found Indians
it was not the truth.
There were Indian people there, some of them looked white,
some of them look black, and some of them looked like me.
But in one way other they identify themselves
in terms of the land, culture, and community as Indian people.
This is a poem that comes from looking for Indians.
In this case, this is not in the South.
This is towards west of here crossing the Colorado
River into Yuma.
It is almost dusk.
For a long time, we've been traveling.
I saw a hawk flying low against the sky.
The horizon was stone.
That was only a while back.
No one owns this river.
Wash with it, drink it, water your plants with it, pray
with it.
The evening sun glimmers across the desert.
Colors signal memories of past journey.
Sounds filled everything and overflowed upon returning.
Now the river is silent.
The Greyhound bus roars smoothly on the bridge.
The riverbed is hot sand.
The willows are last week vestiges.
Alongside the riverbed is a concrete canal.
The liquid in it flows swiftly directed and lifeless.
A brown man leans by the Yuma bus depot
wall, a daze in his eyes.
He tries and tries to smell the river.
He leans trying to feel welcomed to his home.
Yuma is a small town.
It abounds with modern Americana, motels,
gas stations, schools, churches, and et cetera.
Where did they all come from?
Do they really plan for survival this way?
Neon is weak.
Concrete will soon return to desert.
Be patient child.
Be kind and not bitter.
Prepare for the morning.
Go down to the riverbed.
It will let you sing a bit.
Be patient, wait.
A dying warrior.
Leonard Bluebird she tells me in Smitty's bar,
sobbing immense sorrow is dying of leukemia.
I can't do nothing for him.
Look, he's limping.
The dying Leonard hobbling across the floor dancing,
drunk.
The music is crude and loud and cowboy.
Many Indians staring.
Oh, I can't look, she says.
He's got a sister, but she can't do anything.
I'm the same way.
He doesn't want to die in the Indian hospital.
I step out into the night concrete
cliffed Phoenix, sad and walking, cussing at the streets
and the dying bird.
I told you I like Indians.
You meet Indians everywhere.
Once I walked into this place, Flagler Beach, Florida.
You'd never expect it: a bar, some old people in it, ran it.
The usual question, of course, you're an Indian, aren't you?
Yes, ma'am, I'm Indian [AUDIO OUT]
wild, ignorant, savage.
And she wants me to dance.
Well, OK, been drinking beer all the way from Hollywood.
We dance something.
You're Indian, aren't you?
Yeah, Jesus Christ Almighty, I'm one of them.
I like Indians.
There's an Indian around here.
What?
And in walks a big Sioux.
Christ's sake man, house relocation, brother.
He shakes my hand.
Glad to see you.
I thought I was somewhere else.
We play the ping pong machine, drink beer,
once in a while dance with the old lady who likes Indians.
I like Indians.
I told you meet Indians everywhere.
The title poem from this volume Woven Stone
is this, a story of how a wall stands.
My father died in 1978.
He was a stone builder.
He also worked as a laborer and eventually
as a welder for the Santa Fe Railroad,
but he built like other traditional builders
around home at Ako many of the houses
at Ako, Acoma out of stone Adobe.
My father who works with stone says,
that's just the part you see, the stones
which seem to be just packed in on the outside.
And with his hands he puts the stone and mud in place.
Underneath what looks like loose stone
there is stone woven together.
He ties one hand over the other, fitting like the bones
of his hands and fingers.
That's what is holding it together.
It is built that carefully, he says, the mud mixed
to a certain texture patiently.
With the fingers worked in the palm of his hand
so that placed between the stones
they hold together for a long, long time.
He tells me those things, the story of them
worked with his fingers in the palm of his hands
working the stone and the mud until they become the wall that
stands a long, long time.
The second book in Woven Stone is a Good Journey.
I use the image of the road in much of my poems and stories
because it's the hiyaani, the road that we journey upon.
It's the way of life.
It's the way of being on that road.
A good journey has stories in it which
are out of the older traditional retelling at Ako.
And I want to tell at least one story from out
of that journey and the way that people see themselves
within the tradition of storytelling at Ako.
When you're hearing a story you're
supposed to say ehe once in a while
to make sure you're awake, especially
for long stories which can go for hours.
This one isn't.
We don't have that many hours.
I have three children.
One of them is in law school here second year
and a daughter who's 18.
She's in her last year of high school hoping
to go to college next year and then another daughter
who's nine, Sara.
But one time I guess I would tell stories
to Rainy especially when she was a little girl.
She said, well, one time, [SPEAKING ACOMA],,
one time or like Rainy said, you're
supposed to say once upon a time, daddy.
OK, well, once upon a time, there were some Quail Women
grinding corn and Tsushki, Tsushki,
[? k'uu ?],, Coyote Woman was with them.
She was grinding u-uuhshtyah, juniper berries.
I don't know why she wasn't grinding corn.
That's just in the story.
It was a hot, hot very hot day, and the Quail Women got thirsty
and they decided to go get some water to drink.
She said, [SPEAKING ACOMA].
Let's go drink some water and let's
take along our beloved comadre.
So they said to their comadre Coyote Woman,
let's all go get some water to drink.
Shrow-uh, Coyote Woman said.
The water was in a little cistern
at the top of a tall rock pinnacle which stands southeast
of Ako and they walked over there,
but they had to fly to get to the top of that pinnacle.
The coyote women looked at Tsushki
who couldn't fly to the top because she had no feathers
and they felt very sorry and sad for Tsushki.
And so they decided, let's give shacomadre
some of our feathers.
So the Quail Women said that, and they took some feathers out
of themselves and stuck them on Coyote,
on the [SPEAKING ACOMA].
And then they all flew to the top of the pinnacle
where the water was.
They all drink their fill and coyote was the last one
to drink.
While she was drinking from the cistern on her hands and knees,
the koyo women decided to play a trick, a joke on Coyote Lady.
They said, let's take the feathers from our comadre
and leave her here.
All right, they all agreed and they did that,
and they all left.
When Tsushki had drank her fill of water
and was ready to descend the pinnacle,
she found that she could not because she had no feathers
to fly with anymore.
She felt very bad and she sat down wondering what to do.
The rock pinnacle was too high up to jump down from.
But pretty soon Kahmaasquu Dya-ow, Spider Grandmother,
came climbing over the edge of the pinnacle
to drink some water also.
And Coyote or Tsushki thought to herself, aha,
I will ask my grandmother spider to help me off this pinnacle.
She is always a wonderful helpful person.
So Coyote asked, Dya-ow Kahmaasquu,
Do you think you could help me descend this pinnacle?
You are always such a wonderful helpful person.
And spider grandmother said, yes, beloved one, I
will help you.
Climb into my basket, and she pointed
at her basket which was tied at the end of her long rope.
And then she said to the Coyote, but I
ask you one thing, Dya-ow.
While I am letting you down, you must not look up, not once, not
even just a little bit, for if you do, I will drop you
and that is quite a long ways down.
Oh, don't worry about that, Dya-ow, I won't look up at you.
I'm not that kind of a person, Coyote promised.
All right then, Spider Grandmother said.
Climb in and I will let you down.
And the basket began to descend down and down and down.
But on the way down, Coyote looked up
and Spider Grandmother dropped the basket and Coyote
went crashing down.
Well, at this point the story ends, but as you may know,
stories always go on.
Well, sometime later the Shuuwimuu Guiguikuutchah.
Bet you can't say that.
Shuuwimuu Guiguikuutchah, Skeleton Fixer, came along
and he saw a scatter of bones at the foot of the pinnacle.
Shuuwimuu Guiguikuutchah, Skeleton Fixer, said, oh, look,
some poor beloved one must have died.
I wonder who it may be.
The bones were dry and white in the sun,
lying around scattered.
And Skeleton Fixer said, I think I
will put the bones together and find out
and he will live again.
And so he joined the bones together very carefully.
And when he had finished doing that, he danced around.
While he danced the bones while he sang this song,
Shuuwimuu shuuwimuu chuichukuu, shuuwimuu shuuwimuu chuichukuu,
bah, bah.
Shuuwimuu shuuwimuu chuichukuu, shuuwimuu shuuwimuu chuichukuu,
bah.
[AUDIO OUT]
Bones did and the skeleton jumped up.
And it was Coyote Tsushki.
Ah, kumeh, Tsuushkitruda, Skeleton Fixer said.
Oh, it's just you Coyote.
I thought it was someone else.
And as Coyote ran away, Skeleton Fixer
called after her, Nahkeh eh, bah aihatih eyownih trudrai nah!
Go ahead and go.
May you get crushed by a falling rock somewhere.
Coyote stories are important not only
because of their sense of humor and vitality,
but because it's part of that consciousness of tradition
that Native American people hold very preciously.
It's part of the identity that we have,
identity in which there's responsibility
for ourselves and for all that is around us,
the cultural, social context in which we thrive.
The last book in Woven Stone is called
Fight Back for the sake of the people
for the sake of the land, Hanoh Kuutseniah, Hahtse Kuutseniah.
For the sake of the people for the sake of the land.
When I graduated from high school
I worked up in the uranium mining area North--
Northwest of Acoma.
I grew up in McCartys and looking straight due
North of McCarty's Mount Taylor or Kaweeshtima,
which is the name for my granddaughter
Chris, Rainy's daughter.
Kaweeshtima means in the Acoma language Snow Covered Woman
Mountain.
It's the sacred mountain to the North
for the Aak'um'e han'u, the people of the Acoma.
Just below it to the west and to the North of it
was where most of the uranium mining took place.
I worked up there for just over a year
before I went to college, working
with miners who came from the coal mines of West
Virginia and mines in Canada, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado,
Utah, white miners for the most part.
I was amazed at how similar or familiar
their stories of struggle were, how much the stories were
the same as the stories that I grew up with in the Acoma
community, stories that had to do
with trying to make a living, trying to survive,
trying to live a meaningful life.
Even though they were white people and even
though we were Indian people all of us
had some common denominator.
It was that sense of struggle and having
to often be in the position of working for somebody,
those corporations that were taking the uranium out
of the Earth, out of the land.
The Acoma homeland.
So I wrote this book called Fight
Back for the sake of the people for the sake of the land.
Set in 1980 20 years or so after I had worked as a kid
really in that region in the industry.
It was also 300 years after the Pueblo Revolt of 1680
when the native people of New Mexico, the Pueblos,
revolted against the Spanish colonial power
of the military civil and Christian church the Catholics
and drove the Spanish in 1680 back to the South
at least as far back as Paso.
Of course, 12 years later in a so-called bloodless reconquest,
the Spanish Europeans came back to the land
that is now New Mexico.
But I found that I wanted to say something about 1980 very
much in the same vein of the struggle
that the people in 1680 put up in order
to save their land, their community, their culture.
And these are a few poems out of that book Fight Back.
It starts with a prayer, Mid-America Prayer.
Standing again within and among all things,
standing with each other as sisters and brothers, mothers
and fathers, daughters and sons, grandmothers and grandfathers,
the past and present generations of our people.
Standing again with and among all items of life, the land,
rivers, the mountains, plants, animals, all life
that is around us that we are included with.
Standing within the circle of the horizon, the day
sky and the night sky, the sun, moon, the cycle of seasons
and the Earth mother which sustains us.
Standing again with all things that
have been in the past, that are in the present,
and that will be in the future.
We acknowledge ourselves to be in a relationship that
is responsible and proper, that is loving and compassionate.
For the sake of the land and all people
we ask humbly of the creative forces of life
that we be given a portion with which to help ourselves
so that our struggle and work will also
be creative for the continuance of life.
Standing again within among all things,
we ask in all sincerity for hope, courage, peace, strength,
vision, unity, and continuance.
This is some poems from the beginning.
It was that Indian Martinez from over by Bluewater
was the one who discovered uranium West of Grants.
That's what they said.
He brought that green stone into town one afternoon in 1953.
Said he found it by the railroad tracks over by Haystack Butte.
Tourist magazines did a couple of spreads on him,
photographed him in Kodak color and the Chamber of Commerce
celebrated that Navajo man, forgot for the time being
that the brothers from Acoma East of Grants
had killed that state patrolman and never
mind also that the city jail full of Indians.
The city fathers named a city park after him
and some even wanted to put up a statue of Martinez,
but others said that was going too far for just an Indian
even if he was the one who started that area into a boom.
Well, later on when some folks began
to complain about chemical poisons flowing
into the streams from the processing mills
car, wrecks on Highway 53, lack of housing in Grants,
cave ins at section 33, non-union support, high cost
of living, uranium radiation causing cancer,
they the Grants chamber of commerce
always pointed out that it was Martinez, that Navajo Indians
from over by Bluewater who discovered uranium,
it says so in this here brochure,
he found that green stone over by Haystack
out behind his hogan, it was that Indian
who started that boom.
Starting at the bottom.
The truth is most of us didn't know much about the unions
at any rate.
A job was a job.
You were lucky to have one if you got one.
The truth is the companies didn't much care
nor did the unions even if both of them were working our land.
When the mines came to Laguna and Acoma land,
the men and their families were glad in a way
because the men wouldn't have to go so far
away to work for the railroad in Barstow, Richmond, Flagstaff,
Needles or to pick beets and onions in Idaho, Utah,
and Colorado in Arizona or work for them in Bluewater
Valley who paid you in carrots and potatoes.
When Jackpile opened up on Laguna land
some Laguna men got on all right at the bottom.
You have to start at the bottom, personnel said,
for a training period and work your way up.
The Acoma men went to the Ambrosia Lake mines
and always got stuck by the space on the application
forms for previous mining experience,
but the mine steward explained, you have to start at the bottom
and work your way up.
So almost 30 years later the Acoma men
were at the bottom of the underground mines at Ambrosia
Lake and the Laguna men were at the bottom of the open pit
at Jackpile.
They were still training gaining experience and working
their way up.
And weekends that city jail was still full.
When I worked there it was in '60 '61, then
I went to college.
But the mines still went on to 1980
and then the uranium market fell out, the bottom fell out
and there's no more uranium mining there.
But the mines are still there and the processing plants,
the ore processing plants are still there.
They're still assembled.
The energy companies are still waiting for that time
when the market will go back up and they'll start again.
Crazy Gook Indians.
Danny and Emmett got back from Vietnam,
and went to work in the mines.
Danny said, in section 30, one afternoon we blasted
and my partner Emmett thought we were back in Vietnam, back
in the tunnels after the enemy.
He picked up that drill like it was an M-60
and tried to defend us against the shift boss who
had been in the marines too.
I got Emmett quieted down and held him in my arms
for a while.
The boss just laughed and later I
heard him laughing with the superintendent
about those crazy gook Indians on his shift.
I guess I should have let my partner defend us
against that marine.
I was 19 when I was working up there
and that was really my first real experience of ever working
with non-Indian people and to any great extent listening
to what they said.
As I said earlier, that was so much similar in some ways
the stories that were shared by the working men
white miners for the most part.
They reminded me of the stories from railroad work.
Hardworking people have hardworking stories.
I was saved from more years in the mines
and the processing mills for the uranium mining
and processing company Kerr McGee
from Oklahoma because of a strike.
One of the strike leaders was a young man from home.
And I realized that, well, this is
a story about that young man.
And what I mean about the similarity
is that the common denominator of stories
is the common denominator of trying
to fight for what you are about and who you are as an Indian
or as a hardworking non-Indian.
This is what I mean.
Agee.
I don't mean that Agee, I mean Agee from home.
He was just one of us, but a hero,
I mean not in a big way but real because he was one of us.
He was a young who never got beyond 19.
We were the same age though in school he was always behind
and the teachers were always on him for not doing well.
Agee was always laughing and fooling around
and talking Indian, you couldn't do that,
and making English sound like Indian.
You couldn't do that either.
English had to be English.
That was the real American way, and Indian was just Indian.
The teachers so much as said that to us.
Agee quit school in junior high and went to work in the mines.
He went to work because his family was poor
like all our families were poor.
He was one of the first guys from home
in the mines and probably the youngest.
After high school when I started working for Kermac mill
at Ambrosia lake, he was at Haystack working underground.
It's funny.
I mean this.
Teachers in school were always on him because he [AUDIO OUT]
read or wouldn't or couldn't talk English or wouldn't.
But once when I was in grandma's cafe in Milan
where the guys I rode with sometimes
stopped to pick up bag lunches, I was surprised.
Grandma's cafe was usually crowded with miners and mill
workers, but not many of us Indians ever went in there
and Agee was there and he was talking.
I mean talking.
That may not sound like a big deal, but this is what I mean.
We didn't talk much.
Some Indians say Indians are just
like that, shy and reserved and polite, but that's mostly crap.
Lots of times we were just plain scared and we kept our mouths
shut.
I mean Grants and Milan and the mines between Haystack
and Ambrosia Lake all that area used to be Indian land,
Acoma land, but it was surveyed, [AUDIO OUT]
and stolen at the turn of the century,
and there was plenty to say but we didn't say it.
I mean, being Indian wasn't the safest thing to be in town.
So we didn't say much, much less being in Grandma's cafe arguing
with white miners who made jokes about squaws
and called you chief.
I mean Agee was talking.
And he was reading too from the union contract which
was the issue of the argument.
That was right before the strike in 1961.
Most of us few Indian workers didn't know much
about the mine unions, and Agee was
one of the first members from home
and he was arguing for the strike.
As I said before, most of us didn't say much of anything.
We were just glad for the jobs we had, union or no union.
But Agee when the workers went on strike
later spoke for us saying that India, just like other workers
and he wasn't shy or reserved saying
that in English that sounded OK and Mexican and Indian.
Later on Agee went down to Silver City
when the workers went on strike there.
He was always doing that, helping folks
especially old folks and it didn't matter who.
Well, down there one night he was changing a tire
or pushing a stalled car or something.
He was struck accidentally.
That's what they told folks at home and maybe it was.
And maybe too it was because Agee was just another worker,
just another Indian.
There was nothing else necessary for them to tell us.
But what I mean is although Agee never made it beyond young,
the mines were still there and the workers were still fighting
and old people still needed help and the language
of our struggle just sounds and reads
like an Indian, Okie, Cajun, Black, Mexican hero story.
That's what we mean.
In order to give my voice a little rest, I'll sing.
It's just relaxing.
It also gives me more breath.
[AUDIO OUT] is not only something
that we do in our minds abstractly
but it's a physical thing.
It's a physical thing.
My father died as I said in 1978,
and he loved to sing when he was alive.
He was a good singer.
He made songs at Acoma.
And so when he was sick I was teaching in California
at that time and I came home.
He was in a coma, so I was never able to talk
so he would respond.
But I talked with him as he lay in the hospital bed.
And towards the end of his I think
it was about 10 days that he was in the coma,
I sat with him one early, early morning and this song
beating the heart beat.
It's a song about that.
Before my father returned to the continuing Earth life,
before he traveled back North, we sat with him for long hours.
And once early, early in the morning in the hospital just
he and I and the oscilloscope above his bed
beating the heartbeat of his life,
beating the heartbeat of our life.
This song remembers him.
Heart beating, heart beating, heart beating,
beating, beating, beating, beating, beating, beating.
Heart beating, heart beating, heart beating,
beating, beating, beating, beating, beating, beating.
Life beating, Earth beating, all beating, beating, beating,
beating, beating, beating, beating.
Life beating, Earth beating, all beating, beating, beating,
beating, beating, beating.
Heart beating, life beating, we shall know living living,
living, living, living, living.
Heart beating, life beating, we shall know living living,
living, living, living.
We shall know living.
To close off this reading, I'll finish with a couple of poems
from After and Before the Lightning,
which is being considered with a publisher in the East presently
and I hope that they will eventually
decide to publish it.
I wrote it about '85--
1986 when I was teaching at Sinte Gleska in South Dakota.
After and Before the Lightning refers to the season of winter
after the last lightning in October or so
and before the first lightning which is in March or April.
It's a long season of winter.
And in the Midwest for those of you as you know it's quite--
winters are quite severe.
It makes a person really aware of his life
and what his life has to do with the natural force, the power
of the natural elements, the coal, the wind, and its beauty,
its fierce beauty.
So tonight's reading is part of the series of poetry.
Poetics and politics will conclude
with a couple of poems.
This one is called Nothing to do with Halley or Haly.
We are ice and stone, fire and air, comets in the galaxy.
The tail that glistens in our wake is our own origin.
The moment of creation is each day.
There is no wonder about our curiosity
of what is in the heavens.
It is ourselves we try to see.
The stars, planets, comets are our being.
We are the reflection and they are ours, no more no less.
Haley has nothing to do with it.
The comet can only be known by all of us coming into being.
At that time I think it was that the Halley's comet was
coming close to the Earth in '85, '86 the winter.
Star memory travel December.
Night travel toward the unseen horizon
even knowledge is not sure of yet rough estimate
serves as likely guide.
Enough is seen has been from millennia of urgent blood.
What we can live by is not enough,
perhaps just abstractions which linger
at the edge of memory in the past yet we live nonetheless.
[AUDIO OUT] Thrive on constructions
that are not faults but the verifiable truth.
Destination is already secure, has been.
The blood knows that certainty.
This night travel guided only by last June's fierce star
as our final hope survives as the horizon
of our amazing knowledge.
Coming from Valentine Nebraska crossing the state line
into South Dakota, the long distance dark
of the great prairie is unfathomable.
Nothing is known beyond the limited scope of the car lights
beyond the curve.
I think we don't survive by instinct much at times.
We survive and go beyond by the constructions made by our hope.
And history experience identity.
Memory is our experience at the same time
that memory is our hope.
We can't see the horizon yet know it's there.
It has to do, it has to be there since we do
have some rough estimate of it.
We know enough of history and experience
to know it has been there.
Our identity is based on it.
It could not possibly not be there
if we want to be something.
The future is not secured without the construction
of certainty.
The only way we know that mission
is that the horizon we yearn for and finally Okreek
is because we want to get there.
We would be false to ourselves if we did not believe that.
There would only be the gloomy, dark,
a wind that has entered the spirit.
Do not go gently, Dylan Thomas whispered loudly into the dark.
Enormous knowledge.
It is amazing how much knowledge we have of hope.
Whisper bravely into the dark heart.
Whisper loudly, whisper loudly.
And the last poem, Our Eagerness Blooms.
In the shadows beyond the creek, now only patches of snow
remain, greening its soft urgency.
Eagerly we dug the soil yesterday.
We kept looking at the browning hills.
It doesn't matter if it snows again.
We're fearless as the coming spring.
It could never be the same as last month.
The moving Earth tells us that.
The shadows are luminescent eager to receive
the early spring light.
Trees we can tell are growing supple.
Last night a sensual odor flew in the window we didn't close.
What's your sign there comes gradually.
We trust that our eagerness is not foolish.
It's not.
Though spring may disappoint, always it
is ready to receive us again.
The snow hides into shadow.
We bloom, we bloom.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.