Original Fire by Louise Erdrich

Original Fire. Selected and New Poems by Louise Erdrich

Lately, I have been reading poetry.  It sounds crazy, I know but poetry was my first love.  I loved poetry before I knew I liked to read.  I wrote poetry before I knew that I liked to write.  Then I went to college and quit reading and writing poetry.  Fast forward 20 years and poetry has popped back into my life in a new and significant way.

Louise Erdrich is a writer on fire and her poems in this volume, Original Fire, are amazing.  Poetry speaks to each reader differently.  Some poems seemingly have no effect and others knock your socks off.  Many of the poems in Original Fire knocked my socks off and made me think and made me say Wow.

This collection of poems was a combination of some of her poems from two previous volumes of poetry with about 20 new poems not previously published added in.  The poems are broken into five sections titled, Jacklight, The Potchikoo Stories, The Butcher's Wife, The Seven Sleepers and Original Fire.

I started reading a poem or two a day this fall and I look forward to my stolen moments with a poem.  It was especially hard to only read one or two of Erdrich's poems.  I was compelled to keep turning the pages but I wanted to savor them and so I read them slowly to give my mind time to process them before I moved on.  The ending two sections of Original Fire are my favorite and the poems packed a powerful punch.  I loved the Buffalo Prayer,  Advice to Myself, The Seven Sleepers, The Sacraments and many others.

Here is the beginning of The Sacraments

I. Baptism

As the sun dancers, in their helmets of sage,
Stopped at the sun's apogee
and stood in the waterless light,
so, after loss, it came to this:
that for each year the being was destroyed,
I was to sacrifice a piece of my flesh.
The keen knife hovered
and the skin flicked in the bowl.
Then the sun, the life that consumes us,
burst into agony.

Have you read any poetry lately??

Pieces of White Shell by Terry Tempest Williams

Pieces of White Shell.  A Journey to Navajoland by Terry Tempest Williams.

Terry Tempest Williams is a fierce environmentalist and is doing her best to educate readers about the connection between the people, the animals and the land.  Pieces of a White Shell delves into Terry's life as a teacher on the Navajo reservation in Utah and makes connections between Navajo culture, legend and history and Terry's own life and spiritual culture as a Mormon.

"I offer you a sampling of the Navajo voice, of my own voice and the voice of the land that moves us.  We are told a story and then we tell our own.  Each of us harbors a homeland.  The stories that are rooted there push themselves up like native grasses and crack the sidewalk." pg. 8

Pieces of a White Shell begins with Terry working as a collector as she shakes her pouch open on her desk, she wonders what stories the items she has collected tell.  Each item she collected is the name of the chapter and shapes the stories you find there.  Rocks, Sands, Seed, Turquoise, Obsidian, Coral, Pieces of a White Shell, Yucca, Feathers, Coyote Fue, Bone, Deerskin, Wool, the Storyteller and Corn Pollen.

"To tell a story you must travel inward." pg.  129

Beautiful artwork accompanies and illustrates one aspect of each chapter.  There are 13 stories or essays that meld together, told with simplicity and spirituality.  Pieces of White Shell is a testament to the beauty and harmony of the land.  It is full of the old, oral tradition stories of the Navajo people. If you love story and if you love mother earth, you will love this book.

What items do you find in nature and save in a special place?  What stories do they tell?
I collect the feathers in found in my yard and the deer antlers left in spring.  I hold rocks in my pockets and gaze at the them as the reside on my dresser.  We are all collectors of nature and stories.

The Round House by Louise Erdrich

The Round House by Louise Erdrich

Joe is a 13 year old native boy who lives on a North Dakota reservation with his mother and father.  His father, Bazil, is a tribal judge and his mother, Geraldine, works for the reservation, registering Indians new to the tribe.  One day, a day like any other, Joe's mother gets a call and leaves to retrieve a file.  She is late returning home and so Joe and his father go looking for her.  They find her on the road, driving home.  They return home to find her sitting in her car, her hands rigid on the steering wheel and shaking.  When they open the car door, they see blood and vomit and they know immediately that they must get her to the hospital quickly.

Joe's world has been turned upside down.  His mother has been irrevocably wounded and she retreats into the sanctuary of her bedroom leaving Joe to deal with his anger and emotions on his own.  He has so many questions and desperately wants to help his mother and have his life go back to normal, the way it was before the crime was committed.  He remembers his mother smelled of gasoline when they found her in the car, Why?  He listens, he asks questions and then Joe and his three closest friends begin to piece together the crime.  They figure out the crime was committed at the Round House near the lake.  They find clues left behind by investigators and make plans to find out where exactly the crime took place.  Joe is going to make sure the man responsible for hurting his mother pays for his crime.

Life on a Indian reservation in North Dakota is hard and made harder by the fact that criminals who commit a crime on reservation land will likely walk away without being punished for the crime.  According to an news article by the Atlantic written by SIERRA CRANE-MURDOCH on FEB 22 2013, it states;
"In 1978, the Supreme Court case Oliphant v. Suquamish stripped tribes of the right to arrest and prosecute non-Indians who commit crimes on Indian land. If both victim and perpetrator are non-Indian, a county or state officer must make the arrest. If the perpetrator is non-Indian and the victim an enrolled member, only a federally certified agent has that right. If the opposite is true, a tribal officer can make the arrest, but the case still goes to federal court."
It is a jurisdiction nightmare and Louise Erdrich does an excellent job of communicating what this means to a victim and a victims family on the rez.  WOW.  Erdrich and her book The Round House deserve the National Book Award and my hope is that many people read this book and put pressure on Washington to give the Indian Nations the power to prosecute non-Indians who commit a crime
on reservation lands.  To think that perpetrators of crimes like rape and murder go free is horribly upsetting and just plain WRONG.
You can read the article from the Atlantic here:  http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/02/on-indian-land-criminals-can-get-away-with-almost-anything/273391/

Louise Erdrich is one of my favorite authors and reading her books are like coming home for a family reunion and visiting with long lost relatives.  Erdrich is an excellent storyteller and weaves an intricate spider web of interwoven stories that connects through layers of time and place.  Erdrich always teaches me something and I look forward to each new book that she writes as I know it will add the story of the characters I have grown to love throughout time.  The fiction works of Louise Erdrich all center around a reservation in North Dakota and the characters are a part of a family and sometimes the characters from past novels find their way into the current novel.  You never know what relative will visit or drop by to add to the story.  I love it.  All the novels are connected yet you can read them in any order because each book is its own unique and well written entity.

The Round House is fast becoming one of my favorite books of the year as Erdrich's characters have stolen my heart.  The Round House is a powerful novel full of tragedy and comedy and life's most meaningful lessons.  Erdrich has written another memorable story with characters that will live on in your memory for a long time to come.

Last Standing Woman by Winona LaDuke

Last Standing Woman by Winona LaDuke

With a memorable cast of characters, Last Standing Woman chronicles the history of the people from the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota.  The story begins at the borderlands of the Dakota and Anishanaabe with a woman,  a woman who was drawn to the border, the Last Standing Woman. The event that occurs is the Dakota Conflict of 1862 in Mankato, Minnesota and it results in the largest mass execution in the U.S. and the removal of the Dakota Indian tribe from Minnesota lands.

Last Standing Woman follows the White Earth Anishinaabe (also known as the Ojibwe or Chippewa) tribe from the 1860’s to present day.  Last Standing Woman follows seven generations and is a powerful first novel.You learn how white settlers tricked and teased the Native Americans out of their land and systemically set out to destroy their culture.  LaDuke takes you on a journey from suffering to independence as the White Earth nation fights for their tribal rights, land and culture.  The Anishinaabe culture leaps off the page and you can practically smell the fry bread cooking on the stove and hear the drums beating in the distance.

Even though Last Standing Woman is a work of fiction LaDuke states in her author’s note that the history, traditional stories and even some of the characters are true, written to the best of her ability.  LaDuke has written a powerful narrative of her people’s heritage and it shows the strength of the Native people to overcome, adapt and survive.

The White Earth Indian Reservation is still the poorest and largest reservation in Minnesota.  The characters in Last Standing Woman are strong, especially the women, as they overcome adversity, abuse, starvation, diabetes, death of loved ones, alcoholism and more.  This is not a novel that dwells on sadness and loss but a novel that highlights the history and strength of the Anishinaabe people and the adversity they face.

Educate yourself by reading Last Standing Woman.
Miigwech.

Diane Wilson visits South High

Diane Wilson visits South High

Diane Wilson's book, Spirit Car; Journey to a Dakota Past is the current Minneapolis One Read.  Minneapolis One Read promotes the entire city reading one book at the same time and discussing it together.  South High School in Minneapolis participates every year and this year the book is relevant to Minnesota history in that it tells the story of the mass hanging of Indians that occurred in Mankato, MN in 1862.  This year is the 150th anniversary of this devastating war called The Dakota Conflict or Little Crow's war.

On Thursday, October 25th, Diane Wilson visited our school to talk to students in the All Nations program as well as American History students and students in the Voices classes.  I was lucky enough to be in the audience.

Diane told the audience that her mother was Dakota (Native American) and her father was Scandinavian.  Her mother rarely told stories of her family but the one story she did tell was of her boarding school experience.  Diane wanted to learn more about her Dakota side of the family and so began by researching her family history tracing it back many generations.  She interviewed family members.  She did research and learned what happened to her people and why her mother didn't tell her story.  Diane Wilson is telling her mother's story and the history of her family in Spirit Car.

Diane spent time answering student questions and one student asked her about commodity food.  Diane answered by saying if you control someone's food, you can control the person.  If you know anything about commodity food it is full of starch, fat, salt and sugar.  This food is one of the reason's why Native Americans struggle with obesity and diabetes.  Diane has started a local farm and has camps for young people to learn sustainable farming and bring them back to their traditions

Diane spent time after her talk signing books and talking with students and staff.  Later in the day, she visited classrooms.  I can't wait to read Spirit Car and as we get closer to the 150th anniversary of the mass hanging of 38 Indians in Mankato, on December 26, 1862, it is important to take time to reflect and remember.  Spirit Car will help me remember.

Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie

Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie

Reservation Blues takes place on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Washington.  Three young men with nothing better to do form a band called Coyote Springs and begin to feel the pride and pain of success.  One plays an enchanted guitar and with virtually no experience this band takes off.  Later two women join the band and so begins their mystical, rock n' roll odyssey as they travel wide and far in their blue van from bar to bar. 

Every chapter begins with a song, lyrics included, and you can download the originals off of itunes.  The songs are Thomas-Build-the-Fire's lyrical original songs for Coyote Springs.  They are also poignant songs that highlight the Indian experience, history and reservation life.

Reservation Blues is a multi-layered story that mimics life and our connections with the past.  There are ancestral dreams and nightmares that connect the past with the present.  Mysticism, storytelling, blues singing, magic, are what kept me reading and so very interested in the unique storyline.  Sherman does not sugar coat the Indian experience in Reservation Blues as alcoholism, abuse, suicide, unemployment and other important issues come up often in the book.   This is one powerful book.  Reservation Blues had me enchanted from the first page and when the story ended, I was literally singing the blues.

Here is my song: You add the guitar solo please and the baby. baby's.
I call it The Reading Blues.

Late at night,
when I finished the book,
I stared at my nook  (I don't really have a nook but it rhymed)
and started to sing,
the reading blues

Chorus:
Baby, I got the reading blues.
I loved that story
now it is over
I must move on
what is a girl to do
I've got the reading blues.

Sherman
you had my heart, my eyes, my time,
my toe is tapping double time,
to the beat of my soul 
wondering what book I will read next,
will it pass the test.

(Back to chorus).

This is an original copyrighted song by Laura from Booksnob