That rhyme of stars and scars, oh my god.
Keep it going for Danielle.
[CHEERING, APPLAUSE]
Are you ready?
OK.
Our next poet is hydrating.
[LAUGHTER]
He's an activist.
He's a community builder.
I'm very interested in this idea--
I think it's Anne Waldman's idea--
of the infrastructural poet.
Community builders.
People who make things happen for other people.
That's Robert.
And his poems take the pulse of the moment
and transform it into urgency, as you'll see.
I'm so excited to listen to him read.
Robert Harold Bordeaux is an enrolled member of the Sicangu
Lakota Oyate and writer and activist from Spearfish, South
Dakota.
His latest collection of poems, Prairie Bones,
is out now from Wiyounkihipi--
all right, amazing-- Productions.
Give it up for Robert.
[CHEERING, APPLAUSE]
Hau, mitakuyepi.
Robert Bordeaux emaciyapi.
Sicaƞgu Lakota
Oyate hemataŋhaŋ na lehaƞl.
Hocape Otuƞwahe el wati.
Caŋte waste nape ciyuzape lo.
My name is Robert Bordeaux.
I come from the Sicangu Lakota people up in--
currently residing in Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota.
And I greet you all with a good heart.
So thankful to be here.
So thankful to follow such amazing poets.
I don't want this week to end.
I wanted to share a quick story before I dive into my work.
I was listening to an elder share a story
a couple years back.
He talked often about how my tribe, my people,
would send people in all directions
historically and tell them, travel
as far as you need to go until you learn something
to bring home, to better our nation,
to make our nation stronger.
And that's been my experience here,
with In-Na-Po and with all the faculty and the fellows,
and I'm really excited to take what I've learned here
and bring that back home to my people in He Sapa, in the hills
up north.
So I got three pieces for you guys tonight.
This first piece is called Maka Uƞkiksuyapi.
I wish there was a better way to start this poem
other than "I come from a people shattered by violent hands."
History tells this story in different ways.
I choose to tell it from the eyes of the dirt,
the hands of the trees,
the mouth of my ancestors.
I call this truth.
I come from a people shattered into fragments,
scattered across a land that weeps.
This is both metaphor and literal.
What it is not, however, is an ending or a beginning.
UƞLakotapi.
We are Lakota.
Waċiƞuƞṫaƞkapi.
We persevere.
Our fragments, stories, and songs
too powerful for colonial hands to steal away
slip through colonial fingers,
fall to the Earth as seeds ready to root.
Maka uƞkiksuyapi.
The land remembers us.
Su iċaġapi.
Seeds grow.
Have you ever witnessed a child speak Lakota?
Have you seen the little ones dance at Wacipi?
If so, you'll understand that despite lost, we are not lost.
We are seeds prayed into existence by our ancestors,
sowed in dirt, rooted in land that remembers our name.
UƞLakotapi.
Waċiƞuƞṫaƞkapi.
Su iċaġapi.
Maka uƞkiksuyapi.
Thank you.
[CHEERING, APPLAUSE]