OK.
Now, what's the name of it, please?
Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings.
Great stuff.
Thank you.
And at risk of being a salesman, I
have copies of those over there, so--
That title was influenced by--
I've been friends with Norman Patrick Brown.
He's a Diné poet, and he's done theater and all sorts
of things.
And one of his Facebook posts one morning was,
"I am the holy being of my mother's prayer and my father's
song."
And that started off the whole poem.
Yeah.
OK, uh-huh?
I wanted to ask you--
Yeah, it's on.
--to say something about Standing Rock.
Yes, well, the whole reading was about Standing Rock.
Yeah, the whole reading was about Standing Rock.
But one reason that it's a powerful and potent
and absolutely dangerous time, and they're standing there.
It's not by accident that it has come to this point.
And we all know it's a point.
There is a standoff between what are we going to do.
Do we remember that we are part of the water,
and the water lives in us, and that we take care of the water,
and that we say no to this ongoing greed?
Because that's what it's about, the black snake, the pipe,
the oil.
And we have oil stories.
My tribe, the Creek Nation, we have oil stories.
There's oil stories in the Amazon.
It's all over the world, in West Africa.
And one of a major--
Ken Saro-Wiwa was killed because of the oil companies.
They killed him in West Africa, the poet.
And it has to stop.
It has to stop somewhere.
So, at this point, people are saying it has to stop.
And so it's very powerful.
It's a very powerful and potent time.
It's not just about the Standing Rock people.
We were all assigned to be water protectors.
And when we took our first breath here, we were assigned,
OK, we take care.
We took on this life.
We're water protectors.
And so, that's what is so important and powerful
about this time.
And we're all watching it and we're all taking part in it,
in some way, even if we're not there.
And it's important to support what's going on.
I'm astounded, actually.
I'm the kind of person that sometimes something-- and maybe
it's because of the way I grew up or some of the things
I saw growing up-- but if something horrible happens,
I'll just kind of put it here and then it finally hits.
I guess I kind of take it in, and then it finally--
I get devastated by it.
But I have to wait.
And it finally hit me just how absolutely outrageous--
I mean, it did when it was happening.
But the impact of it is that all of these agencies, police
agencies, in freezing weather, would hit people
with rubber bullets, water cannons.
I mean, these people who were standing
there protesting peacefully.
If this had happened to any non-native group,
then it would not have been tolerated.
There would have been national, international outcry.
But because it was indigenous people--
now people are starting to catch hold but we're all concerned.
I'm concerned.
We know the stories.
So everybody can do a part.
We can speak.
A lot of people don't know what's going on.
And to speak out-- there's a lot of false information going on.
So I would go directly to the sources.
And if you're on Facebook, Valerie
Taliman, who's with Indian Country Today,
she's a good reporter.
And there's other sources.
Yeah, so keep them foremost.
And we're part.
What happens here, it's happening to all of us.
And people all over the world, there
are native people showing up there from all over the world
because they've all dealt with these same oil companies.
The Amazon, the people have had their homes destroyed
by these oil companies.
All over the US, the gulf, the gulf waters, and we
don't even know.
Most of what's happened down there
has been hidden from public knowledge, the destruction
in those waters and our lands, everywhere, the fracking.
I was in that big earthquake.
I had come back home to Tulsa.
And I remember waking up.
And we'd never had earthquakes in Tulsa.
A huge earthquake, it didn't feel like it was going to stop.
And I wonder if what would happen if it didn't stop.
OK, other?
Yes.
How's it going?
Hi, Bill.
One aspect of your work that means a lot to me
is the references to kitchen tables.
And it's shaped me quite a bit, just
seeing people come in and out of my house,
all the characters that come visit my dad and drink coffee.
And my mom and my aunts all sitting around
telling jokes and everything.
It shaped me a lot as a person and as a writer.
I was just wondering what the kitchen table meant to you.
Well, I write about it.
Yeah, I write about it a lot.
And in here, yeah, it was everything.
That's where you found out what was going on that you
weren't supposed to know.
So our kitchen table had a little hiding place
right under there that I liked to hide out in.
It was the place of hidden knowledge.
But yeah, I think that it's really
the place where all action, peace action,
begins at a kitchen table, the place where
people gather to eat.
Just as the roots of all wars, every war has its roots there.
That's where it starts, in those places, those intimate places,
and gathers up.
You can gauge the economic situation
of a country, of a place, by who's at the kitchen table.
Is there even a kitchen table there anymore?
Is anybody eating there?
Or is it just the kids there and nobody else?
Or is a whole family there, grandma and the aunts?
And what are people eating?
You can gauge the spiritual situation of a people
by what are they eating there.
Is it all processed food?
Are they opening cans and boxes?
Or is it food that they've grown,
food with real life in it, food that is free of GMOs?
There's so much.
I want to do a class on the kitchen table.
Yeah, that's one of the classes I
want to do before I leave where I'm teaching,
a kitchen table class that deals with all of these.
Well, I would like to sign up.
OK, yeah, we're--
If you have more questions, please do bring them up.
We'll close these doors down.
Thank you so much, Joy.
Really appreciate it.
Thank you.
Buy books.
Hang out.
[APPLAUSE AND CHEERING]