My Home As I Remember

Lee Maracle, Sandra Laronde, Lee Maracle, Sandra Laronde

• Publisher: Natural Heritage
• Year: 2000
• ISBN:
  9781459721111
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: North American Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

My Home As I Remember describes literary and artistic achievements of First Nations, Inuit and Metis women across Canada and the United States, including contributions from New Zealand and Mexico. Their voices and creative expression of identity and place are richly varied, reflecting the depth of the culturally diverse energy found on these continents.

Over 60 writers and visual artists are represented from nearly 25 nations, including writers such as Lee Maracle, Chrystos and Louise Bernice Halfe, and visual artists Joane Cardinal-Schubert, Teresa Marshall, Kenojuak Ashevak, Doreen Jensen and Shelley Niro; and some who are published for the first time in this landmark volume.

Lee Maracle is the author of numerous books, including Ravensong. Sandra Laronde, writer/actor, is Executive Director of Native Women in the Arts.

poetry

spirit woman

here i am, nokomis

i am here

walking behind

following

tracking your steps

i hear you, nokomis

softly singing

your voice

dancing on the tips

of the birch trees

once burned into my memory

long before i passed

through the stars

songs to the earth

songs for my heart

reclaiming

my forgotten ways

here i am, nokomis

i am here

spirit woman

touch me

i am

‘woman from the south wind’

Sharon L. White

Sharon L. White is a member of the Wolf Clan and the Leech Lake Band of the Ojibwe. She is an artist, writer and poet, musician, businesswoman and community leader. She is the publisher and editor of the Beaver Tail Journal, a Native American creative writers’ journal. She is also a book illustrator of When Beaver Was Very Great which was nominated for Minnesota’s State Book Award. She operates Little Bay Arts & Crafts Co-op and designs web pages and commercial art.

Rez Times- Three

1) I thrive on mama’s warmth

and work

a newborn spider

i sit at her feet

on cool green grass

under the birch trees

she makes

the laws of the universe:

sundogs speak of cold weather

toties¹ sing one snow and spring is born

‘that’s what the old Indians know,’ she says

and the old Indian

aunties make soup down the road

grammas tell stories in the next house

uncles split wood in the bush behind our house

grampas turn soil south of the sugar maples

every direction, door & window

leads to a woman

who knows my great-grandfather

to a man who carries babies

the oldest sacred stories

hands

holding the threads

of the universe

together

2) i know the difference between

me & straight women

but mother’s twisted rigid thoughts

set leghold traps

to crack my bones

good-intentioned relatives

hope to skin me

tan my hide

sew my smoked

skin to their feet

as moccasins to be worn

at a marriage ceremony

i refuse to dance

instead i leave a piece of flesh behind

just so i can walk away

3) fifteen years later

the silence of the bush

(broken only by the rattle of leaves

and dry crow wings flapping)

rises from my pores and says

we’re still here if you come back

i can’t

i want nothing more than to rest

my feet

on your dark soil

or hear the stories

of my auntie’s death

and the many births

while i lie

in bed listening to the city’s hum

poplar trees’

luminescent leaves

and glistening bark

call to me

i remember their ashes

make the best corn soup

i am hungry

always hungry

i think i hear

that sound like rain

hitting the sidewalk:

snow snakes² travelling slick

and quick on hard packed snow

and i turn my head

expecting to see

polished wood flying

down the street

nothing

nobody reaches for me like the rolling hills

nobody misses me like the wide, slow river

nothing calls me like the silence

Susan Beaver

I am an out and proud Mohawk lesbian from Six Nations of the Grand River Reserve. I recently completed my studies in Creative Writing at the En’owkin International School of Writing. My work appears in The Colour of Resistance and A Piece of My Heart: An Anthology of Lesbians of Colour. I’ve also published in the Rebel Girls’ Rag and Fireweed Feminist Quarterly in Toronto.

1 Toties is pronounced DOE-dees and translates as young frogs.

2 Snow snakes, polished poles about six feet long, are thrown down, a track of snow.

Poetry as Ceremony

This quintessential Spirit: voices often penetrate our spoiled, scarred psyches and force thoughts to materialize, expressing themselves in creative forms: song, dance, music, art, literature. These creations provide us with a sense of interconnection, a sense of being. They give us proof of what we all seem to crave the most: love and hope.

Ceremony, a necessary act to obtain or regain balance with the earth, replenishes her love for humankind. The purpose of ceremony is to integrate: to unite one with all of humankind as well as the realm of the ancestors, to blend one with all of creation.

I have found a deepening connection to the land through experiencing poetry. The land where my ancestors lived and died for thousands of years. The land fed with the skin, bones, and flesh of those who have gone before me. The s...