WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.850 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.850 --> 00:00:02.020 align:middle line:90% Thank you, Diana. 00:00:02.020 --> 00:00:05.230 align:middle line:84% Thank you so much for having us all here today, 00:00:05.230 --> 00:00:07.430 align:middle line:90% and Bojan for the introduction. 00:00:07.430 --> 00:00:09.250 align:middle line:84% I'm really excited about this Institute 00:00:09.250 --> 00:00:12.280 align:middle line:90% for Inquiry and Poetics. 00:00:12.280 --> 00:00:14.410 align:middle line:84% I think the idea of reframing our future 00:00:14.410 --> 00:00:17.710 align:middle line:84% through imaginative language is-- 00:00:17.710 --> 00:00:18.980 align:middle line:90% well, it's what we need to do. 00:00:18.980 --> 00:00:22.040 align:middle line:84% So thank you for all the work you're doing towards that. 00:00:22.040 --> 00:00:23.450 align:middle line:90% Absolutely. 00:00:23.450 --> 00:00:26.180 align:middle line:84% It's been such a pleasure to participate 00:00:26.180 --> 00:00:29.240 align:middle line:84% in the making of this anthology, and to talk a bit 00:00:29.240 --> 00:00:33.620 align:middle line:84% today about the anthology within the framework of belonging 00:00:33.620 --> 00:00:37.057 align:middle line:84% and how language can bring us to that kind of belonging. 00:00:37.057 --> 00:00:39.140 align:middle line:84% So I'm going to read some poems from the anthology 00:00:39.140 --> 00:00:42.890 align:middle line:84% that I feel really connected to because they 00:00:42.890 --> 00:00:45.980 align:middle line:84% are about belonging when you're somewhat 00:00:45.980 --> 00:00:48.200 align:middle line:84% in an in-between space, which I think 00:00:48.200 --> 00:00:53.210 align:middle line:84% all humans are, but particularly in this country, Native people. 00:00:53.210 --> 00:00:55.580 align:middle line:84% And just on a personal level for me-- 00:00:55.580 --> 00:00:59.540 align:middle line:84% since I am daughter of a military diplomat growing up 00:00:59.540 --> 00:01:00.440 align:middle line:90% mostly in Europe-- 00:01:00.440 --> 00:01:03.740 align:middle line:84% I spent more years in Europe than I did the United States. 00:01:03.740 --> 00:01:06.710 align:middle line:84% I kind of grew up in the borderlands of identity. 00:01:06.710 --> 00:01:09.620 align:middle line:84% My father's family has a deep Dutch New York 00:01:09.620 --> 00:01:12.140 align:middle line:84% history dating back to the Revolutionary War, 00:01:12.140 --> 00:01:14.600 align:middle line:90% as well as German ancestry. 00:01:14.600 --> 00:01:16.340 align:middle line:84% I lived in Austria as a kid, so I 00:01:16.340 --> 00:01:19.520 align:middle line:84% was really able to connect to that German culture 00:01:19.520 --> 00:01:21.350 align:middle line:90% and language. 00:01:21.350 --> 00:01:23.780 align:middle line:84% My mother's family is rooted and centralized 00:01:23.780 --> 00:01:27.110 align:middle line:84% in Oklahoma's Muskogee history, which I was connected to 00:01:27.110 --> 00:01:30.020 align:middle line:84% during the summer when my sister and I were sent home to the US 00:01:30.020 --> 00:01:32.630 align:middle line:84% to live with our grandparents and cousins. 00:01:32.630 --> 00:01:36.110 align:middle line:84% So I grew up understanding about this conflicted 00:01:36.110 --> 00:01:38.000 align:middle line:90% national and cultural identity. 00:01:38.000 --> 00:01:40.640 align:middle line:84% I also grew up understanding that homeland 00:01:40.640 --> 00:01:45.200 align:middle line:84% is a place of loss, as much as it is a place to be found. 00:01:45.200 --> 00:01:48.230 align:middle line:84% My family's stories of our ancestors, on all sides, 00:01:48.230 --> 00:01:50.000 align:middle line:84% were always a part of our identity, 00:01:50.000 --> 00:01:52.590 align:middle line:84% and I'm grateful for that connectedness. 00:01:52.590 --> 00:01:54.680 align:middle line:84% So when I began writing seriously, 00:01:54.680 --> 00:01:57.230 align:middle line:84% I sought my own literary ancestors, 00:01:57.230 --> 00:02:00.920 align:middle line:84% the concept Joy Harjo has graciously named and encouraged 00:02:00.920 --> 00:02:02.400 align:middle line:90% among all of us. 00:02:02.400 --> 00:02:04.730 align:middle line:84% I grew up reading, as many of us probably did, 00:02:04.730 --> 00:02:07.700 align:middle line:84% Norton anthologies and learning the literary traditions 00:02:07.700 --> 00:02:11.150 align:middle line:84% of the United States as a realm occupied primarily 00:02:11.150 --> 00:02:13.970 align:middle line:84% by Englishmen with a few upper-class women 00:02:13.970 --> 00:02:15.560 align:middle line:90% dotting the periphery. 00:02:15.560 --> 00:02:17.750 align:middle line:84% I did not find my literary ancestors 00:02:17.750 --> 00:02:21.290 align:middle line:84% in Whittier or Bradstreet, Whitman or Thoreau. 00:02:21.290 --> 00:02:24.320 align:middle line:84% So when my mom gave me Joy Harjo's book of poetry 00:02:24.320 --> 00:02:26.480 align:middle line:84% as a young teenager and told me, this 00:02:26.480 --> 00:02:28.850 align:middle line:84% was a poet from our same nation, I 00:02:28.850 --> 00:02:30.470 align:middle line:84% knew the story of American literature 00:02:30.470 --> 00:02:32.930 align:middle line:84% was incomplete as I had learned it. 00:02:32.930 --> 00:02:36.560 align:middle line:84% I knew there were other Muskogee writers, other Native women 00:02:36.560 --> 00:02:37.550 align:middle line:90% writers. 00:02:37.550 --> 00:02:40.970 align:middle line:84% There were so many literary ancestors hidden in the poems 00:02:40.970 --> 00:02:45.010 align:middle line:84% under the palimpsest of writers who had erased them.