it was 1986 and my brother had made a stereo stand it was crap, frankly, a cry of despair if you knew how to read such things, but i didn’t. we just liked having a stereo stand because of course, my sister had a stereo she also had me, and her old pal as room…
Category: Aboriginal life
No Masterpiece: On Finding One Drum
Here’s the essay i wrote for Edmonton Arts Council’s 2015 Annual Report (pg. 11). Lots of other good stuff in this issue, too. But as for my piece, it took a while to know what to write. After all, it turns out (a little to my surprise) that my practice could be accurately described as…
Tawatinâ Bridge Song
Recently, i was asked to present poetry at a workshop for the shortlisted artists in line for a major city commission – art for the Tawatinâ* Bridge, which will bring a new LRT line across our river and down through the Millwoods community. If you know Edmonton, you know how big this connection is; if you…
May 23rd: Birthing It For the World (the Cribbage Hand Year)
In this, the day after the occasion of the fulfilment of a cribbage hand of years since my father’s passing i talk at length with some of my kin and realise, it’s more than time to renovate You and Me Against the World though it must be said that has kept us alive. Imagine what we…
May 2: What if I Go Singing?
I live in an elm cathedral, where i live there is room for birds. Lady bees bustle rummage sale in the shrubberies all May long. Here, too, the song. I know what i must do, every day lift up the song, the old song, let it be heard here in these streets, let this cathedral…
Day 30: Because Blossoms
did i mention i came to the city suspicious? after all every indian of a certain age (yes, indian, to frame this) knows that cities eat indians. of course, there’s the trick. i am anishinabekwe, lnuskw also, and polish by matrilineage. i came looking for some fabled southland that sang to me in dreams all…
Day 29: Spiritual Dissonance
is this cognitive dissonance? listening to Elder recount the ancient agreements, while reading the bombing of another Medecins Sans Frontiers hospital. is this even possible? Elder, to gather our teachings to gather back to our clear and gentle roots to be curious, creative, kind, and stand against the tide of plain, cowardly evil. to live, and…
Day 26: Blessing Song
when i first came to the city, my fear rode on my back cities don’t love indians. but i didn’t know better than to walk everywhere, because i could. and i began to admit there was life all around me, from the first crack of dandelion leaves up in march, through the stubborn winter song…
Day 24: River of Fire
In 1984, in the dark, on the backroad up from Emerson Trail, if you need to know exactly, we saw fire in the sky. my brother and i U2 hammering a yowl about A Sort of Homecoming i saw the coming time, when i would finally go around that big bend in the highway and fly out…
Day 20: Changing Into Thunderbird
before an enthralled crowd, one anishinabe man explains the art of another; this copper thunderbird this morrisseau, the price he paid for vision, this gift with which he won for all of us a way to see that this land is rightly the nesting ground of binasi thunderbird. i sit in the back and wonder, so…
Day 14: Politics and the Hardware Store
nobody knows anyone our secret power lines and the larger lines underwriting over-arching, architecture of the power mad. the young women warriors yell at me, not knowing i’ve been yelled at all my life and i see it passing by. i was young when people hid native ancestry and my family refused that. it was…
Prairiepomes 